I have been required to put roots and shoots and little stems and tendrils together much as their author did, to wander discourage...d and confused as Hansel and Gretel through a dark wood of witches, to strike the hot right way suddenly, but just as suddenly to mire, to drag, to speed, to shout Urreek! to fall asleep, to submit to revelations, certainly to curl a lip, to doubt, unnose a disdainful snort, snick a superior snicker, curse, and then at some point not very pleasantly to realize that the game I'm playing is the game of creation itself, because Tender Buttons is above all a book of kits like those from which harpsichords or paper planes or model bottle boats are fashioned, with intricacy no objection, patience a demand, unreadable plans a pleasure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
'Tis no great valor to perish sword in hand, and bravado on lip; cased all in panoply complete. For even the alligator dies in his... mail, and the swordfish never surrenders. To expire, mild-eyed, in one's bed, transcends the death of Epaminondas.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Byron and Elvis Presley look alike, especially in strong-nosed Greek profile. In Glenarvon, a roman a clef about her affair with B...yron, Caroline Lamb says of her heroine's first glimpse of him, "The proud curl of the upper lip expressed haughtiness and bitter contempt." Presley's sneer was so emblematic that he joked about it. In a 1968 television special, he twitched his mouth and murmured, to audience laughter, "I've got something on my lip." The Romantic curling lip is aristocratic disdain: Presley is still called "the King," testimony to the ritual needs of a democratic populace. As revolutionary sexual personae, Byron and Presley had early and late styles: brooding menace, then urbane magnanimity. Their everyday manners were manly and gentle. Presley had a captivating soft-spoken charm. The Byronic hero, says Peter Thorslev, is "invariably courteous toward women." Byron and Presley were world-shapers, conduits of titanic force, yet they were deeply emotional and sentimental in a feminine sense.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When a subject is highly controversial ... one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opin...ion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Can fire be carried in the bosom without burning one's clothes? Or can one walk on hot coals without scorching the feet? So is he ...who sleeps with his neighbor's wife; no one who touches her will go unpunished.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »