Some people say the business about the jolly fat person is a myth, that all of us chubbies are neurotic, sick, sad people. I disag...ree. Fat people may not be chortling all day long, but they're a hell of a lot nicer than the wizened and shriveled. Thin people turn surly, mean and hard at a young age because they never learn the value of a hot fudge sundae for easing tension. Thin people don't like gooey soft things because they themselves are neither gooey nor soft. They are crunchy and dull, like carrots. They go straight to the heart of the matter while fat people let things stay all blurry and hazy and vague, they way things actually are. Thin people want to face the truth. Fat people know there is no truth.... Thin people believe in logic. Fat people see all sides. The sides fat people see are rounded blobs, usually gray, always nebulous and truly not worth worrying about. But the thin person persists. "If you consume more calories than you burn," says one of my thin friends, "you will gain weight. It's that simple." Fat people always grin when they hear that. They know better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I think that carrying a baby inside of you is like running as fast as you can. It feels like finally letting go and filling yourse...lf up to the widest limits.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The world is eaten up by boredom.... You can't see it all at once. It is like dust. You go about and never notice, you breathe it ...in, you eat and drink it. It is sifted so fine, it doesn't even grit on your teeth. But stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands. To shake off this drizzle of ashes you must be for ever on the go. And so people are always "on the go."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have done it [appointed commissions] regretfully and with the hope that it would be temporary. But after a commission is establi...shed you find it always wants to enlarge itself, employ more people, is very busy with Senators and Congressmen to impress upon them the great value of the services of the commission, and even when I talk to people that I appoint to commissions and tell them I would like them to go on to various boards with the idea that they may be abolished, they say they ought to be abolished, but when they have taken their position they very soon seem to change their mind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I confess I was surprised to find that so many men spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives almost, a-fishing. It is remarkabl...e what a serious business men make of getting their dinners, and how universally shiftlessness and a groveling taste take refuge in a merely ant-like industry. Better go without your dinner, I thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a cormorant. Of course, viewed from the shore, our pursuits in the country appear not a whit less frivolous.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Reading any collection of a man's quotations is like eating the ingredients that go into a stew instead of cooking them together i...n the pot. You eat all the carrots, then all the potatoes, then the meat. You won't go away hungry, but it's not quite satisfying. Only a biography, or autobiography, gives you the hot meal.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Babe, you know how these things go, it's like a crap game. When you're hot you shoot everything, you shoot the works. Well, right ...now baby, I'm so hot I'm burning up all over.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »