In the last fifteen years or so, the women's novel has turned into the Amtrak of American literature; crashing through the gates a...t Aristotle, jumping the tracks at Horace, ignoring the flashing red lights at Boileau, and scooping up Alexander Pope in the cowcatcher. The rules are down and it's every stylist for herself in this best of all Tupperware parties, where plot and characterization have been replaced by the kind of non-stop chatter that enabled the French Foreign Legion to meet its enlistment quota for a hundred and fifty years. In the unlikely event that future scholars will bother to give our era a cultural tag, it will be called the Age of Women's Litter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the selfishness that is bred of great success is our shame. We have subdued the wilderness and made it ours. We have conquered... the earth and the richness thereof. We have indelibly stamped upon its face the seal of our dominating will. Now, unlike Alexander sighing for more worlds to conquer, we should address ourselves to adding beauty to that glory and grandeur.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Fate forces its way to the powerful and violent. With subservient obedience it will assume for years dependency on one individual:... Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, because it loves the elemental human being who grows to resemble it, the intangible element. Sometimes, and these are the most astonishing moments in world history, the thread of fate falls into the hands of a complete nobody but only for a twitching minute.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When they have a choice, people will always gravitate to those rooms which have light on two sides, and leave the rooms which are ...lit only from one side unused and empty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A plane is a bad place for an all-out sleep, but a good place to begin rest and recovery from the trip to the faraway places you'v...e been, a decompression chamber between Here and There. Though a plane is not the ideal place really to think, to reassess or reevaluate things, it is a great place to have the illusion of doing so, and often the illusion will suffice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... all In the interests of this pornographic masterpiece,... Variegated, polluted skyscraper to which all gazes are drawn, Pleasure we cannot and will not escape.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of... the Law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You've spent too much time with the stars. You don't know anything about living, the law of the jungle, the human jungle. I do, I'...ve spent my life at it. You don't know what your civilized people will do to cling to life. I do, because I know I'd cling if I had to kill to do it. And so will you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I will not let thee go. I hold thee by too many bands:... Thou sayest farewell, and lo! I have thee by the hands, And will not let thee go.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »