There stands a gig in the gray morning, in the mist, the impatient traveler pacing the wet shore with whip in hand, and shouting t...hrough the fog after the regardless Charon and his retreating ark, as if he might throw that passenger overboard and return forthwith for himself; he will compensate him. He is to break his fast at some unseen place on the opposite side. It may be Ledyard or the Wandering Jew. Whence, pray, did he come out of the foggy night? and wither through the sunny day will he go? We observe only his transit; important to us, forgotten by him, transiting all day.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jum...p, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next--life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a leaf. And where it was--a whisper. What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping. In between the scurries and flights, what? Be a chameleon, ink- blend, chromosome change with the landscape. Be a pet rock, lie with the dust, rest in the rainwater in the filled barrel by the drainspout outside your grandparents' window long ago.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let those who desire a secure homeland conquer it. Let those who do not conquer it live under the whip and in exile, watched over ...like wild animals, cast from one country to another, concealing the death of their souls with a beggar's smile from the scorn of free men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I will take it all: tongs, molten lead, prongs, garrotes, all that burns, all that tears, I want to truly suffer. Better one hundr...ed bites, better the whip, vitriol, than this suffering in the head, this ghost of suffering which grazes and caresses and never hurts enough.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whip me, ye devils, From the possession of this heavenly sight!... Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur! Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At Passadumkeag we found ... earnest politicians, to wit,--white ones, I mean,--on the alert to know how the election was likely t...o go; men who talk rapidly, with subdued voice, and a sort of factitious earnestness you could not help believing, hardly waiting for an introduction, one on each side of your buggy, endeavoring to say much in little, for they see you hold the whip impatiently, but always saying little in much. Caucuses they have had, it seems, and caucuses they are to have again,--victory and defeat. Somebody may be elected, somebody may not. One man, a total stranger, who stood by our carriage in the dusk, actually frightened the horse with his asseverations, growing more solemnly positive as there was less in him to be positive about.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The stroke of the whip maketh marks in the flesh: but the stroke of the tongue breaketh the bones. Many have fallen by the edge of... the sword: but not so many as have fallen by the tongue.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less... socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Genghis Khan, in his usual jodhpurs accessorized with whip, straddled a canvas chair and gloated upon the fairyland he had built. ...Journalists, photographers, secretaries, sycophants, script girls, and set dressers milled and stirred around him, activity ... irresistibly reminiscent of the movement of maggots upon rotting meat.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »