The great passion in a man's life may not be for women or men or wealth or toys or fame, or even for his children, but for his mas...culinity, and at any point in his life he may be tempted to throw over the things for which he regularly lays down his life for the sake of that masculinity. He may keep this passion secret from women, and he may even deny it to himself, but the other boys know it about themselves and the wiser ones know it about the rest of us as well.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Smoking ... is downright dangerous. Most people who smoke will eventually contract a fatal disease and die. But they don't brag ab...out it, do they? Most people who ski, play professional football or drive race cars, will not die--at least not in the act--and yet they are the ones with the glamorous images, the expensive equipment and the mythic proportions. Why this should be I cannot say, unless it is simply that the average American does not know a daredevil when he sees one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of th...ese little ones.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... suffering does not ennoble. It destroys. To resist destruction, self-hatred, or lifelong hopelessness, we have to throw off th...e conditioning of being despised, the fear of becoming the they that is talked about so dismissively, to refuse lying myths and easy moralities, to see ourselves as human, flawed, and extraordinary. All of us--extraordinary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For myself and my loved ones, I want the heat, which comes at the speed of light. I don't want to have to hang about for the blast..., which idles along at the speed of sound.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul...; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Next we come to the bronchial buster, or the man (it is usually a man) who, being in the throes of a terrific throat and tube trou...ble chooses that night for theater-going.... He will soon learn to pick his pauses with finesse. It does no good to cough while there is a great deal of noise going on on the stage. No one can hear. The time is just as the star is about to do a little low speaking to her dying lover or when the hero, alone in his garret, goes silently over to the fireplace and tears up the letter. There for a good rousing bark, my hearty, followed by a series of short sharp ones like those of a coxswain! If possible the appearance of apoplexy should be simulated.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I am writing a novel I must actually live the lives of my characters. If, for instance, my hero is a gambler on the French Ri...viera, I must make myself pack up and go to Cannes or Nice, willy-nilly, and there throw myself into the gay life of the gambling set until I really feel that I am Paul De Lacroix, or Ed Whelen, or whatever my hero's name is. Of course this runs into money, and I am quite likely to have to change my ideas about my hero entirely and make him a bum on a tramp steamer working his way back to America, or a young college boy out of funds who lives by his wits until his friends at home send him a hundred and ten dollars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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 »