Every so often, I turn on the television and see one of the movement leaders being asked some idiot question like, "Isn't the wome...n's movement in favor of all women abandoning their children and going off to work?" ... the leader usually replies that the movement isn't in favor of all women doing anything right; what the movement is about, she says, is options. She is right, of course. At its best, that is exactly what the movement is about. But it just doesn't work out that way. Because the hardest thing for us to accept is the right to those options. I hear myself saying these words: what this movement is about is options. I say it to my friends who are frustrated, or housebound, or guilty, or child-laden, and what I am really thinking is, if you really got it together, the option you would choose is mine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that ...cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstances, "Do not decide, but leave the question open," is itself a passional decision--just like deciding yes or no--and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You don't merely give over your creativity to making a film--you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two ...rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night's washing-up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most of us don't have the option of quitting work, even if our care situation drove us to consider it in desperation. . . . It's h...aving no choice but to beat the bushes, having no choice but to "settle" on someone or some institution, having no choice but to hand over our child and hope for the best (or, at least, hope to avoid the worst) that gnaws away at even the most unflappable among us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We hear the haunting presentiment of a dutiful middle age in the current reluctance of young people to select any option except th...e one they feel will impinge upon them the least.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nor did the world have to await scientific progress to save the bulk of its children. The highest levels of infant mortality were ...never necessary. Children have always been something of an option. The only revolutionary change which modern medicine has offered us, very recently, is the expectation that all our children will survive and the confidence to invest our affections in them. But whether this will ensure that they will stand higher among our values will also prove to be a matter of attitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness ...of monkeys.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »