After I went to bed I had a curious fancy as to dreams. In sleep the doors of the mind are shut, and thoughts come jumping in at t...he windows. They tumble headlong, and therefore are so disorderly and strange. Sometimes they are stout and light on their feet, and then they are rational dreams.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We set up a certain aim, and put ourselves of our own will into the power of a certain current. Once having done that, we find our...selves committed to usages and customs which we had not before fully known, but from which we cannot depart without giving up the end which we have chosen. But we have no right, therefore, to claim that we are under the yoke of necessity. We might as well say that the man whom we see struggling vainly in the current of Niagara could not have helped jumping in.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
West Hell, said to be the hottest and toughest part of that notorious resort, was once the home of Big John de Conqueror, who elop...ed with the Devil's daughter.... The Devil pursued them on his famous jumping bull, and when they met, Big John tore off one of the Devil's arms and almost beat him to death with it. Before Big John left Hell, he passed out ice water to everybody, and even turned down the dampers, remarking that he expected to return to visit his wife's folks pretty soon, and he didn't like the house kept so hot.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Initially, between the trees, he caught sight of whirling, jumping bodies. Heya-hey-heya. Someone climbing. Rocks pitched after a ...board; and on the river, tilting patches of reflection. Heya-fulla-heya-heya. Boys were sliding down the bank on their buttocks, roughing the scaly sand. They sailed a can lid on the water where at first it turned, floating, then sank, burning like a mirror. Hiyah-smilah. Hee-mee? Coltch. Skirts rose slowly, slowly subsided. A parasol flew open with a snap. Or-rawk. Gah. Houf. Half buried in the shingle, a deep red brick was then awash. Yo-yo giggy. Teetoo Sheek? Num! Lissa-lissa. A willow leaned out, trailing its leaves in the water.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As he walks away on his own two feet--the toddler's body-mind has reached its moment of perfection. The world is his and he the mi...ghty conqueror of all he beholds.... As long as mother sticks around in the wings, the mighty acrobat confidently performs his trick of twirling in circles, walking on tiptoe, jumping, climbing, staring, naming. He is joyous, filled with his grandeur and wondrous omnipotence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the last fifteen years or so, the women's novel has turned into the Amtrak of American literature; crashing through the gates a...t Aristotle, jumping the tracks at Horace, ignoring the flashing red lights at Boileau, and scooping up Alexander Pope in the cowcatcher. The rules are down and it's every stylist for herself in this best of all Tupperware parties, where plot and characterization have been replaced by the kind of non-stop chatter that enabled the French Foreign Legion to meet its enlistment quota for a hundred and fifty years. In the unlikely event that future scholars will bother to give our era a cultural tag, it will be called the Age of Women's Litter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O to break loose, like the chinook salmon jumping and falling back,... nosing up to the impossible stone and bone-crushing waterfall--LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable...--that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Unlike the mother-son relationship, a daughter's relationship with her mother is something akin to bungee diving. She can stake he...r claim in the outside world in what looks like total autonomy--in some cases, even "divorce" her mother in a fiery exit from the family--but there is an invisible emotional cord that snaps her back. For always there is the memory of mother, whose judgments are so completely absorbed into the daughter's identity that she may wonder where Mom leaves off and she begins.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »