New Yorkers speak more quickly and shift topics more rapidly. We all know that. But the way it's done is fascinating. At least it ...fascinated me when I first moved to New York. Someone has the floor and talks. As soon as I know what they are going to say, I can jump in, finish the sentence to show I understand, and take off into my own turn. The northern California I know isn't like that. Someone talks, and I lie back and listen and let them roll for a while. When they're done, there'll be a pause that will flash like a green light to announce that someone else can have the floor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why am I so determined to put the shoulder where it belongs? Women have very round shoulders that push forward slightly; this touc...hes me and I say: "One must not hide that!" Then someone tells you: "The shoulder is on the back." I've never seen women with shoulders on their backs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly Weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind h...is back for a treacherous stab.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How might one describe Max Beerbohm to someone who knows nothing about him? Well, for a start, one might imagine D.H. Lawrence. Pi...cture the shagginess of Lawrence, his thick beard, his rough-cut clothes, his disdain for all the social and physical niceties. Recall his passionateness--his passion, so to say, for passion itself--his darkness, his gloom. Think back to his appeal to the primary instincts, his personal messianism, his refusal to deal with anything smaller than capital "D" Destiny. Do not neglect his humorlessness, his distaste for all that otherwise passed for being civilized, his blood theories and manifold roiling hatreds. Have you, then, D.H. Lawrence firmly in mind? Splendid. Now reverse all of Lawrence's qualities and you will have a fair beginning notion of Max Beerbohm, who, after allowing that Lawrence was a man of "unquestionable genius," felt it necessary to add, "he never realized, don't you know--he never suspected that to be stark, staring mad is somewhat of a handicap to a writer."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only person really soiled with trade I ever stumbled on in old New Hampshire... Was someone who had just come back ashamed From selling things in California.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A young professor I watched in action at one of our large eastern colleges used to stand with his back to the class and mumble exp...lanations of blackboard problems. He was "let out" at the end of two years because students refused to attend his classes. He was given an evasive reason for his dismissal and he left with justifiable bitterness toward the administration. If someone had told him the truth he could have avoided this denouement. Sometimes professors go on for years without any conception of remediable faults which irritate their listeners.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Much more frequent in Hollywood than the emergence of Cinderella is her sudden vanishing. At our party, even in those glowing days..., the clock was always striking twelve for someone at the height of greatness; and there was never a prince to fetch her back to the happy scene.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your g...irl.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life.... They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be. It's ...wonderful to have someone like that around, you always feel you can count on them. You can go away and come back, you can change your mind and your hairdo and your politics, and when you get through doing all these upsetting things, you look around and there they are, just the way they were, just being.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »