"Then he remembered that it was no fun being angry unless he had someone to frighten and make miserable."
"The reason most people are bad is because they don't try to be good."
"People often do a good deed without hope of reward, but for an evil deed they always demand payment."
I find it funny that after Uncle Henry and Aunt Em get to Oz they are given separate bedrooms. Suppose it has to do with the times.
"[The School Pills] are sugar-coated and are quickly and easily swallowed. I believe the students would rather take the pills than study, and certainly the pills are a more effective method. You see, until these School Pills were invented we wasted a lot of time in study that may now be better be employed in practicing athletics."
Apparently in Britain "Draft" is spelled "Draught" but still means "a current of air".
"[The Fuddles] are made in many small pieces, and whenever any stranger comes near them they have a habit of falling apart and scattering themselves around."
New Word Learned: "Mete": dispense or allot justice, a punishment, or harsh treatment.
The amount of puns in the Utensia chapter is boggling my mind!!
The city of Bunbury is very Wonderland-esque. A city of bunnies, that dress sharply, and speak intelligently that are able to make people bigger or smaller to suit their city.
Charlotte Russe is a cake that the mold of the cake pan is lined with sponge fingers (Ladyfingers) and then filled with a custard. Sometimes cake or bread slices are used in place of the Ladyfingers. Charlotte Russe is served cold with whipped cream.
"Then they began talking to one another in long, deliberate speeches, where many words were used but little was said."
"I do not aspire to be very wise, for I noticed that the happiest people are those who do not let their brains oppress them."
"[My brains] never worry me. There are many seeds of thought in my head but they do not sprout easily. I am glad that it is so, for if I occupied my days in thinking I should have no time for anything else."
It's funny to imagine a world where airplanes were still an invention that people hadn't quite mastered yet. Also amusing that the author thought to talk about new inventions affecting fairies and their countries and how the reason we don't see them is because they had the forethought to hide themselves forever.
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Sam Reviews "The Road to Oz" by L. Frank Baum (Oz, #5)
"I've learned from long experience that every road leads somewhere, or there wouldn't be any road; so it's likely that if we travel long enough, my dear, we will come to some place or another in the end."
"Be contented with your lot, whatever it may be, if you are wise."
"[The shaggy man] had refused to give up his shaggy clothes for new ones, because if he did that he would no longer be the shaggy man, he said, and he might have to get acquainted with himself all over again."
"To become civilized means to dress as elaborately and prettily as possible, and to make a show of your clothes so your neighbors will envy you."
The Musicker's name is Allegro da Capo. Allegro means "fast" and da Capo means "from the beginning", which explains why his breaths repeat the same tune every time.
For once Dorothy and her friends didn't invite a character they met on their journey to join them, poor Musicker.
There's been few characters that sound creepy based on their descriptions, but the Scoodlers definitely sound demonic. Two fronts, one all white with clown make up, one all black with weasel eyes, and they present themselves in big groups.
Funny it took til book five for the author to mention rainbows at all, and Dorothy says "there are things that would suit me better than dancing on rainbows."
"The only way to do a thing
"Is do it when you can,
"And do it cheerfully, and sing
"And work and think and plan.
"The only really unhappy one
"Is he who dares to shirk;
"The only really happy one
"Is he who cares to work."
"Rent" can mean a large tear in a piece of fabric.
An "Alderman" is an elected official of a municipal court.
Why on earth can Toto not talk when anything else brought from Oz can?
"If we used money to buy things with, instead of love and kindness and the desire to please one another, then we should be no better than the rest of the world. Fortunately, money is not known in the Land of Oz at all. We have no rich, and no poor; for what one wishes the others all try to give him, in order to make him happy, and no one in all Oz cares to have more than he can use."
First book ever I think to mention characters using the bathroom or "to make such toilets as they could."
"You could love the Tin Woodman because he had a fine nature, kindly and simple ... Tok-tok was popular with the people of Oz because he was so trustworthy, reliable and true; he was sure to do exactly what he was wound up to do, at all times and in all circumstances."
"Perhaps it is better to be a machine that does its duty than a flesh-and-blood person who will not, for a dead truth is better than a live falsehood."
"'But I thought nobody ever died in Oz,' [Dorothy] said.
"'Nor do they, although if one is bad, he may be condemned and killed by the good citizens.'"
"'I think you are brighter than you used to be, Jack.' said the Tin Woodman. 'Your last head was a stupid one.'
"'The seeds in this one are better,' was [Jack's] reply."
The idea of a bear skin rug coming to life is pretty messed up.
"'You have some queer friends, Dorothy,' she said.
"'The queerness doesn't matter so long as they're friends,' was the answer."
"It isn't what we are, buy what folks think we are, that counts in this world."
Where / how did Santa get wrapped up in Oz?
"Be contented with your lot, whatever it may be, if you are wise."
"[The shaggy man] had refused to give up his shaggy clothes for new ones, because if he did that he would no longer be the shaggy man, he said, and he might have to get acquainted with himself all over again."
"To become civilized means to dress as elaborately and prettily as possible, and to make a show of your clothes so your neighbors will envy you."
The Musicker's name is Allegro da Capo. Allegro means "fast" and da Capo means "from the beginning", which explains why his breaths repeat the same tune every time.
For once Dorothy and her friends didn't invite a character they met on their journey to join them, poor Musicker.
There's been few characters that sound creepy based on their descriptions, but the Scoodlers definitely sound demonic. Two fronts, one all white with clown make up, one all black with weasel eyes, and they present themselves in big groups.
Funny it took til book five for the author to mention rainbows at all, and Dorothy says "there are things that would suit me better than dancing on rainbows."
"The only way to do a thing
"Is do it when you can,
"And do it cheerfully, and sing
"And work and think and plan.
"The only really unhappy one
"Is he who dares to shirk;
"The only really happy one
"Is he who cares to work."
"Rent" can mean a large tear in a piece of fabric.
An "Alderman" is an elected official of a municipal court.
Why on earth can Toto not talk when anything else brought from Oz can?
"If we used money to buy things with, instead of love and kindness and the desire to please one another, then we should be no better than the rest of the world. Fortunately, money is not known in the Land of Oz at all. We have no rich, and no poor; for what one wishes the others all try to give him, in order to make him happy, and no one in all Oz cares to have more than he can use."
First book ever I think to mention characters using the bathroom or "to make such toilets as they could."
"You could love the Tin Woodman because he had a fine nature, kindly and simple ... Tok-tok was popular with the people of Oz because he was so trustworthy, reliable and true; he was sure to do exactly what he was wound up to do, at all times and in all circumstances."
"Perhaps it is better to be a machine that does its duty than a flesh-and-blood person who will not, for a dead truth is better than a live falsehood."
"'But I thought nobody ever died in Oz,' [Dorothy] said.
"'Nor do they, although if one is bad, he may be condemned and killed by the good citizens.'"
"'I think you are brighter than you used to be, Jack.' said the Tin Woodman. 'Your last head was a stupid one.'
"'The seeds in this one are better,' was [Jack's] reply."
The idea of a bear skin rug coming to life is pretty messed up.
"'You have some queer friends, Dorothy,' she said.
"'The queerness doesn't matter so long as they're friends,' was the answer."
"It isn't what we are, buy what folks think we are, that counts in this world."
Where / how did Santa get wrapped up in Oz?
Sunday, October 8, 2017
Sam Reviews "Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum (Oz, #4)
This story was sweet, though I still prefer the previous story more. On to the next.
I think it's really sweet that Frank Baum writes letters to his child readers at the beginning of each of his books. It definitely goes to show how times have changed, and how an author could so much easier be influenced by their readers during the time where few things were truly mass produced.
"'We had a lot of earthquakes. Didn't you feel the ground shake?'
"'Yes; but we're used to such things in California, they don't scare us much.'"
"We can't help ourselves no, you know, and I've always been told it's foolish to borrow trouble."
"No one can love a person he's afraid of."
Since there are no horses in Oz, it seems odd that they would call a sawhorse a sawhorse, since it's called that based on it looking somewhat like a horse.
"Whenever an appeal is made to law sorrow is almost certain to follow."
I think it's really sweet that Frank Baum writes letters to his child readers at the beginning of each of his books. It definitely goes to show how times have changed, and how an author could so much easier be influenced by their readers during the time where few things were truly mass produced.
"'We had a lot of earthquakes. Didn't you feel the ground shake?'
"'Yes; but we're used to such things in California, they don't scare us much.'"
"We can't help ourselves no, you know, and I've always been told it's foolish to borrow trouble."
"No one can love a person he's afraid of."
Since there are no horses in Oz, it seems odd that they would call a sawhorse a sawhorse, since it's called that based on it looking somewhat like a horse.
"Whenever an appeal is made to law sorrow is almost certain to follow."
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Sam Reviews "Ozma of Oz" by L. Frank Baum (Oz, #3)
Genuinely I think I like this story best, even more than the original story that inspired the movie. The puzzle they had to solve (the main conflict) was so interesting and entertaining and reminded me of modern day escape rooms. I also feel this story was more cohesive and easier to move through, especially compared to the 2nd book in the collection.
If Uncle Henry was so sick, why would a long boat ride to Australia seem like a good idea?
"If one is going to talk, it's best to talk correctly."
"'It's strange' said the girl, reflectively; 'but as I'm not a hen I can't be 'spected to understand that.'"
"'Bill! Why, that's a boy's name.'
"'What difference does that make?'
"'You're a lady hen, aren't you?'
"'Of course. But when I was first hatched out no one could tell whether I was going to be a hen or a rooster; so the little boy at the farm where I was born called me Bill, and made a pet of me because I was the only yellow chicken in the whole brood. When I grew up, and he found that I didn't crow and fight, as all the roosters do, he did not think to change my name, and every creature in the barn-yard, as well as the people in the house, knew me as 'Bill.' so Bill I've always been called, and Bill is my name.'"
"We are safe from the Wheelers until we starve to death, anyhow; and before that time comes a good many things can happen."
"Mr. Smith was an artist, as well as an inventor, and he painted a picture of a river which was so natural that, as he was reaching across it to paint some flowers on the opposite bank, he fell into the water and was drowned."
"Mister Tinker made a ladder so tall that he could rest the end of it against the moon, while he stood on the highest rung and picked the little stars to set in the points of the king's crown. But when he got to the moon Mister Tinker found it such a lovely place that he decided to live there."
"'Are you of royal blood?'
"'Better than thay, ma'am, I came from Kansas.'"
"I wish you could, indeed, free my aunt and her ten royal children. For if they were restored to their proper forms and station they could rule the Kingdom of Ev themselves, and that would save me a lot of worry and trouble. At present there are at least ten minutes every day that I must devote to affairs of state, and I would like to be able to spend my whole time in admiring my beautiful heads."
"He sold [his family] to the powerful Nome King in exchange for a long life, and afterward destroyed the life by jumping into the sea."
"You can hardly imagine the size of my appetite. It seems to fill my whole body, from the end of my throat to the tip of my tail. I am very sure the appetite doesn't fit me, and is too large for the size of my body."
"'I've married a man who owns nine cows,' said Jinjur to Ozma, 'and now I am happy and contented and willing to lead a quiet life and mind my own business.'
"'Where is your husband?' asked Ozma.
"'He is in the house, nursing a black eye,' replied Jinjur, calmly. 'The foolish man would insist upon milking the red cow when I wanted him to milk the white one; but he will know better next time, I am sure.'"
"...the young men who attend the college are no worse off than they were before. You see, in this country are a number of youths who do not like to work, and the college is an excellent place for them."
If Uncle Henry was so sick, why would a long boat ride to Australia seem like a good idea?
"If one is going to talk, it's best to talk correctly."
"'It's strange' said the girl, reflectively; 'but as I'm not a hen I can't be 'spected to understand that.'"
"'Bill! Why, that's a boy's name.'
"'What difference does that make?'
"'You're a lady hen, aren't you?'
"'Of course. But when I was first hatched out no one could tell whether I was going to be a hen or a rooster; so the little boy at the farm where I was born called me Bill, and made a pet of me because I was the only yellow chicken in the whole brood. When I grew up, and he found that I didn't crow and fight, as all the roosters do, he did not think to change my name, and every creature in the barn-yard, as well as the people in the house, knew me as 'Bill.' so Bill I've always been called, and Bill is my name.'"
"We are safe from the Wheelers until we starve to death, anyhow; and before that time comes a good many things can happen."
"Mr. Smith was an artist, as well as an inventor, and he painted a picture of a river which was so natural that, as he was reaching across it to paint some flowers on the opposite bank, he fell into the water and was drowned."
"Mister Tinker made a ladder so tall that he could rest the end of it against the moon, while he stood on the highest rung and picked the little stars to set in the points of the king's crown. But when he got to the moon Mister Tinker found it such a lovely place that he decided to live there."
"'Are you of royal blood?'
"'Better than thay, ma'am, I came from Kansas.'"
"I wish you could, indeed, free my aunt and her ten royal children. For if they were restored to their proper forms and station they could rule the Kingdom of Ev themselves, and that would save me a lot of worry and trouble. At present there are at least ten minutes every day that I must devote to affairs of state, and I would like to be able to spend my whole time in admiring my beautiful heads."
"He sold [his family] to the powerful Nome King in exchange for a long life, and afterward destroyed the life by jumping into the sea."
"You can hardly imagine the size of my appetite. It seems to fill my whole body, from the end of my throat to the tip of my tail. I am very sure the appetite doesn't fit me, and is too large for the size of my body."
"'I've married a man who owns nine cows,' said Jinjur to Ozma, 'and now I am happy and contented and willing to lead a quiet life and mind my own business.'
"'Where is your husband?' asked Ozma.
"'He is in the house, nursing a black eye,' replied Jinjur, calmly. 'The foolish man would insist upon milking the red cow when I wanted him to milk the white one; but he will know better next time, I am sure.'"
"...the young men who attend the college are no worse off than they were before. You see, in this country are a number of youths who do not like to work, and the college is an excellent place for them."
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Sam Reviews "Adultolesence" by Gabbie Hanna
| Gabbie states that this book is inspired by Bo Burnham and Shiel Silverstein, and it shows. So expect some of those quirky silly type poems and expect short poems. But it's a sweet collection and I'm glad to add it to my coffee table book collection. *spoiler alert* - but also not really there's probably close to 300+ poems in her book and I think I only took photos of like 20. |
Friday, September 22, 2017
Sam Reviews "The Marvelous Land of Oz" by L. Frank Baum (Oz, #2)
"By the time Tip had picked himself up and cleared the dust from his throat so he could say 'Whoa!' there was no further need of saying it, for the horse was long since out of sight. So he did the only sensible thing he could do. He sat down and took a great rest, and afterward began walking along the road."
"You seem harmless, Folks do not smile so delightfully when they mean mischief."
Thought it was kind of cool that the General of the Revolt Army is a girl, but then the author wrote that she wanted the emeralds used in the emerald city of decoration to be used for jewelry instead so it almost seems like a slight insult to girls.
New word/term learned: Quoits (koits, kwoits, kwaits) is a traditional gamewhich involves the throwing of metal, rope or rubber rings over a set distance, usually to land over or near a spike (sometimes called a hob, mott or pin). The sport of quoits encompasses several distinct variations.
I guess the Tin [Wood]man's name is Nick Chopper.
"Do not dampen today's sun with the showers of tomorrow."
"Tailors having, like cats, nine lives, as you probably know."
"Everything in life is unusual until you get accustomed to it."
"Still, it is a Joke. And a Joke derived from a play upon words is considered among educated people to be eminently proper. ... To pronounce a joke that allows both meanings of a certain word, proves the joker a person of culture and refinement, who has, moreover, a thorough command of the language."
Very clever of the travelers to ask a mouse to walk ahead of them so the Mombi's tricks could be detected.
"'I'm glad you have decided to come back and restore order, for doing housework and minding the children is wearing out the strength of every man in the Emerald City.'
"'Hm!' said the Scarecrow, thoughtfully. 'If it is such hard work as you say, how did the women manager is so easily?'
"'I really do not know' replied the man, with a deep sigh. 'Perhaps the women are made of cast-iron.'"
"Why, when it comes to law, I have nothing to say, for laws were never meant to be understood, and it is foolish to make the attempt."
"That proves you are unusual and I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed."
"I am only remarkable because I can't help it."
New word learned: Lorgnette: a pair of glasses or opera glasses held in front of a person's eyes by a long handle at one side.
"The Wonderful Wizard was never so wonderful as Queen Ozma, for he claimed to do many things he could not do; whereas our new Queen does many things no one would ever expect her to accomplish."
"I am [the richest man in all the world] but not on account of my money. For I consider brains far superior to money, in every way. You may have noticed that if one has money without brains, he cannot use it to advantage; but if one has brains without money, they will enable him to live comfortably to the end of his days."
"At the same time, you must acknowledge that a good heart is a thing that brains can not create, and that money can not buy. Perhaps, after all, it is I [the Tin Woodman] who am the richest man in all the world."
"You are both rich, my friends, and your riches are the only riches worth having - the riches of content!"
Friday, September 15, 2017
Sam Reviews "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum (Oz, #1)
Turns out the movie followed pretty closely to the movie. And I believe the creatures they left out were simply creatures it would have been hard to create when the movie was made. Clearly written for a younger demographic, the story was easy to get through and relatively short.
Quoted from the Introduction:
"Yet the old-time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as "historical" in the children's library; for the time has come for a series of newer "wonder tales" in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and bloodcurdling incident devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder-tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident. Having this thought in mind, the story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was written solely to pleasure children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out." -L. Frank Baum. Chicago, April, 1900.
Learned a new word: Garret; a top-floor or attic room, especially a small dismal one (traditionally inhabited by an artist).
"When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child's laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy's merry voice reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at."
"...only witches and sorceresses wear white." -- Never heard that part of the myth / story before.
"Blue is the color of the Munchkins, and white is the witch color; so we know you are a friendly witch." -- Dorothy's iconic blue and white gingham dress.
Crazy to me that in the storybook, the Tinman was originally a man but became a Tin Woodman because he kept chopping off pieces of himself and a magical person turned him into tin.
"I shall take the heart, for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world."
Learned a new definition of a word: Truck; basically anything on wheels that can be used to carry or haul heavy objects.
When they got to the city and were told they had to put on locked spectacles that only one man had the keys to, I don't know if I'd be comfortable with that. Sure seems like a fast way to get burned.
"The witch did not bleed where she was bitten, for she was so wicked, that the blood in her had dried up many years before."
"My people have worn green glasses on their eyes so long that most of them think it really is an Emerald City, and it certainly is a beautiful place, abounding in jewels and precious metals, and every good thing that is needed to make one happy. I have been good to the people, and they like me; but ever since this Palace was built, I have shut myself up and would not see any of them."
"I'm really a very good man, but I'm a very bad Wizard."
"Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge."
"The True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid."
"'I am going to Oz to get my brains at last. When I return I shall be as other men are.'
"'I have always liked you as you were,' said Dorothy simply."
I don't remember the Wizard leaving the Scarecrow in charge of the Emerald City.
"'Am I really wonderful?'
"'You are unusual.'"
Quoted from the Introduction:
"Yet the old-time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as "historical" in the children's library; for the time has come for a series of newer "wonder tales" in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and bloodcurdling incident devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder-tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident. Having this thought in mind, the story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was written solely to pleasure children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out." -L. Frank Baum. Chicago, April, 1900.
Learned a new word: Garret; a top-floor or attic room, especially a small dismal one (traditionally inhabited by an artist).
"When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child's laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy's merry voice reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at."
"...only witches and sorceresses wear white." -- Never heard that part of the myth / story before.
"Blue is the color of the Munchkins, and white is the witch color; so we know you are a friendly witch." -- Dorothy's iconic blue and white gingham dress.
Crazy to me that in the storybook, the Tinman was originally a man but became a Tin Woodman because he kept chopping off pieces of himself and a magical person turned him into tin.
"I shall take the heart, for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world."
Learned a new definition of a word: Truck; basically anything on wheels that can be used to carry or haul heavy objects.
When they got to the city and were told they had to put on locked spectacles that only one man had the keys to, I don't know if I'd be comfortable with that. Sure seems like a fast way to get burned.
"The witch did not bleed where she was bitten, for she was so wicked, that the blood in her had dried up many years before."
"My people have worn green glasses on their eyes so long that most of them think it really is an Emerald City, and it certainly is a beautiful place, abounding in jewels and precious metals, and every good thing that is needed to make one happy. I have been good to the people, and they like me; but ever since this Palace was built, I have shut myself up and would not see any of them."
"I'm really a very good man, but I'm a very bad Wizard."
"Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge."
"The True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid."
"'I am going to Oz to get my brains at last. When I return I shall be as other men are.'
"'I have always liked you as you were,' said Dorothy simply."
I don't remember the Wizard leaving the Scarecrow in charge of the Emerald City.
"'Am I really wonderful?'
"'You are unusual.'"
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Sam Reviews "Plaid" by Pia Moorland
This will not be a long review. I had no idea what to expect from this book, and it's handwritten style confused me. But this is such a strong and inspiring story. it was a fast read because of the large print, but that by no means takes away from the impact. It's a simple, though heartbreaking story, meant to shed light on abuse, not really for entertainment so there wasn't much to necessarily pull out or quote, except for a little piece in the very beginning:
"Do not be fooled by legal terminology that uses terms like indecent or unnatural. No rapes are decent or natural. The terms are used to classify rapes. A cleaner way to explain things. I think it would be better to label things more clearly for a society in denial. Things like rape of a six year old, rape of a nine year old. By using terms under the age of fourteen or sixteen it does not allow the full impact of what occurs in the life of a sexually abused child to enter the lay person's mind."
"Do not be fooled by legal terminology that uses terms like indecent or unnatural. No rapes are decent or natural. The terms are used to classify rapes. A cleaner way to explain things. I think it would be better to label things more clearly for a society in denial. Things like rape of a six year old, rape of a nine year old. By using terms under the age of fourteen or sixteen it does not allow the full impact of what occurs in the life of a sexually abused child to enter the lay person's mind."
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Sam Reviews "Five Men Who Broke My Heart" by Susan Shapiro
I think it's awesome that the author grew up in Michigan and went to U of M Ann Arbor. As far as my feelings on the book, I felt like the book could have been written in a better way, more storytelling. But the author is primarily a journalist, so it makes sense that I read that way. Also, I'm sure most people would think that the story / autobiography I inevitably want to write would read this way, too.
"In my family, achievement was redemption."
"From age sixteen to thirty-one [are] the worst years to be off and on in love with anybody."
"If I was capable of loving someone it would be you, but I'm not so I don't."
"The hidden perk of punishing: it left a trail that could be easily followed if someone from the past wanted to find you. Or was that the hidden peril?"
"That was the problem lately - everything led back to what was missing."
"Five years was the crucial point in a union - when the sheets you got as wedding presents were wearing thin. It was time to decide whether to buy new sheets, live with each other's lunacy forever and have a baby, or give up and go back to playing musical beds." - Isadora Wing
"At forty-two, he had chosen a student almost half my age, as if twenty years later he could still only handle half of me."
"That was my curse, I remembered everything."
"'He's ten years older. When he dies, you and I will get married in our old age.' ... He could only use the M-word from the safest distance possible."
"That was the problem with marriage: nothing stayed neat or where you expected it."
"The one benefit of middle age was being to tired for bullshit."
"So what if I sounded petty? I was."
"You said when I left for Harvard I'd get one more gold star on my forehead, but still be empty inside. You were right."
"I'd settle for feeling the way I used to feel at sixteen, when everything was still possible."
"After each break up, I couldn't help but feel abandoned. Until I found another boyfriend - who eventually abandoned me as well. Until I met Aaron the workaholic, who managed to marry and abandon me simultaneously."
"Breakups are worse than death. When a mate passed away, you were left with good memories and sympathy. When a lover dumped you, you were expected to get over it in a month. Then, for the rest of your days, you were faced with the threat of seeing him happier with someone else."
"Was that what I wanted from the men I used to love - permission to have what they couldn't give me?"
"Had I broken his heart first? No wonder I distorted the truth."
"I was flattered; I still had the power to at least ruin his schedule."
"[Marriage] was all timing. When you're ready, you're ready. You go for your fantasy. If that doesn't work, you try someone available."
"I was a bad wife for wanting to go to Claire's party more than I wanted to greet [my husband after a three week long work trip]. My mother would have been waiting at home for my father, sweating over a brisket. No, my mother wouldn't be waiting, she'd never let him out of her sight for that long."
"Years of therapy trying to shrug off the overwhelming pressure to be like our mothers. Or was it guilt that we didn't have to be?"
"That was the problem with honesty, it didn't end. You always needed to keep going further."
"No wonder Richard inflated his success. He had to bolster himself up, no one else in his life did."
"There were three ways [people] could [change]: through therapy, the death of a parent, or healthy love."
"Richard and Sally had only dated for a few years two decades before; their hate was longer and more passionate than their love."
"He had also just watched Ally McBeal and said I reminded him of her. I found the character totally neurotic, but at least she was skinny. Did he remember me skinny? Or neurotic?"
"Stop apologizing for your life."
"It seemed I was much more apt to be completely heartbroken when I was at my thin weight. Conversely, I had happily pranced down the aisle at my heaviest. So when I gave up all the dieting and exercising, there was room to fit in happiness."
"This was exactly what I detested about marriage. I could not make one simple decision about my own apartment, taxes, or womb without getting his sign-off."
"More comfortable playing shrink than siren."
"Aaron spoke more slowly than Joshua, his words more deliberate. His manner was older, he knew who he was. Yet that meant he couldn't change. Men my age were more malleable."
"Whoever said weddings were romantic was single and/or in the wedding business."
"I felt awkward, like an actress reprising a role I'd walked out on decades ago, swearing I'd never return."
"Every lover is a reaction against your last." - Erica Jong
"In my family, achievement was redemption."
"From age sixteen to thirty-one [are] the worst years to be off and on in love with anybody."
"If I was capable of loving someone it would be you, but I'm not so I don't."
"The hidden perk of punishing: it left a trail that could be easily followed if someone from the past wanted to find you. Or was that the hidden peril?"
"That was the problem lately - everything led back to what was missing."
"Five years was the crucial point in a union - when the sheets you got as wedding presents were wearing thin. It was time to decide whether to buy new sheets, live with each other's lunacy forever and have a baby, or give up and go back to playing musical beds." - Isadora Wing
"At forty-two, he had chosen a student almost half my age, as if twenty years later he could still only handle half of me."
"That was my curse, I remembered everything."
"'He's ten years older. When he dies, you and I will get married in our old age.' ... He could only use the M-word from the safest distance possible."
"That was the problem with marriage: nothing stayed neat or where you expected it."
"The one benefit of middle age was being to tired for bullshit."
"So what if I sounded petty? I was."
"You said when I left for Harvard I'd get one more gold star on my forehead, but still be empty inside. You were right."
"I'd settle for feeling the way I used to feel at sixteen, when everything was still possible."
"After each break up, I couldn't help but feel abandoned. Until I found another boyfriend - who eventually abandoned me as well. Until I met Aaron the workaholic, who managed to marry and abandon me simultaneously."
"Breakups are worse than death. When a mate passed away, you were left with good memories and sympathy. When a lover dumped you, you were expected to get over it in a month. Then, for the rest of your days, you were faced with the threat of seeing him happier with someone else."
"Was that what I wanted from the men I used to love - permission to have what they couldn't give me?"
"Had I broken his heart first? No wonder I distorted the truth."
"I was flattered; I still had the power to at least ruin his schedule."
"[Marriage] was all timing. When you're ready, you're ready. You go for your fantasy. If that doesn't work, you try someone available."
"I was a bad wife for wanting to go to Claire's party more than I wanted to greet [my husband after a three week long work trip]. My mother would have been waiting at home for my father, sweating over a brisket. No, my mother wouldn't be waiting, she'd never let him out of her sight for that long."
"Years of therapy trying to shrug off the overwhelming pressure to be like our mothers. Or was it guilt that we didn't have to be?"
"That was the problem with honesty, it didn't end. You always needed to keep going further."
"No wonder Richard inflated his success. He had to bolster himself up, no one else in his life did."
"There were three ways [people] could [change]: through therapy, the death of a parent, or healthy love."
"Richard and Sally had only dated for a few years two decades before; their hate was longer and more passionate than their love."
"He had also just watched Ally McBeal and said I reminded him of her. I found the character totally neurotic, but at least she was skinny. Did he remember me skinny? Or neurotic?"
"Stop apologizing for your life."
"It seemed I was much more apt to be completely heartbroken when I was at my thin weight. Conversely, I had happily pranced down the aisle at my heaviest. So when I gave up all the dieting and exercising, there was room to fit in happiness."
"This was exactly what I detested about marriage. I could not make one simple decision about my own apartment, taxes, or womb without getting his sign-off."
"More comfortable playing shrink than siren."
"Aaron spoke more slowly than Joshua, his words more deliberate. His manner was older, he knew who he was. Yet that meant he couldn't change. Men my age were more malleable."
"Whoever said weddings were romantic was single and/or in the wedding business."
"I felt awkward, like an actress reprising a role I'd walked out on decades ago, swearing I'd never return."
"Every lover is a reaction against your last." - Erica Jong
Monday, July 31, 2017
Sam Reviews "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd
Overall I really enjoyed this book. I know I've seen the movie but it had been long enough ago that I didn't remember the details of the story. I had trouble being interested in the beginning, but at about the halfway point I became invested and couldn't wait to continue. I think this story is beautiful and has a ton of valuable lessons we should all learn and commit to memory.
"We loved them [negroes] in the Lord, Brother Gerald said, but they had their own places."
"I couldn't help but envy the way a good storm got everyone's attention."
"If you look carefully at people's eyes the first five seconds they look at you, the truth of their feelings will shine through for just an instant before it flickers away."
"You could not stop a bee from working if you tried. ... They are hard working to the point of killing themselves. Sometimes you want to say to them, 'Relax, take some time off, you deserve it.'"
"Did you know there are thirty-two names for love in one of the Eskimo languages? And we just have this one. We are so limited, you have to use the same word for loving [a person] as you do for loving a Coke with peanuts."
"When they looked at [the Black Madonna of Breznichar in Bohemia], it occurred to them for the first time in their lives that what's divine can come in dark skin. You see, everybody needs a God who looks like them."
"Women make the best beekeepers, 'cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting. It comes from years of loving children and husbands."
"I decided against marrying altogether. There were enough restrictions in my life without someone expecting me to wait on him hand and foot. Not that I'm against marrying, I'm just against how it's set up."
"'Being in love and getting married, now, those are two different things. I was in love once, of course I was. Nobody should go through life without falling in love.'
"'But you didn't love him enough to marry him?'
"'I loved him enough, I just loved my freedom more.'"
"You think to much. It would do you a world of good to stop thinking and just go with your feelings once in a blue moon."
"Have you ever written a letter you knew you could never mail but you needed to write it anyway?"
"August turned [the news] off. Enough was enough. You cannot fix the whole world."
"You can be bad at something, but if you love doing it, that will be enough."
"After you get sung, you can't get unstung no matter how much you whine about it."
"Look, [God], I know you meant well creating the world and all, but how could you let it get away from you like this? How come you couldn't stick with your original idea of paradise? People's lives were a mess."
"The sort of look conjured from power without benefit of love."
"Was it the wounded places down inside people that sought each other out, that bred a kind of love between them?"
"It's something everybody wants - for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters."
"I felt somebody should personally thank every rock out there for the human misery it had absorbed. We should kiss them one by one and say, 'We are sorry, but something strong and lasting had to do this for May, and you are the chosen ones. God bless your rock hearts.'"
"[Her suicide] had been the thing they'd been waiting for half their lives without even realizing it."
"When it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid."
"I could see the point in [imaginary friends]. How a lost part of yourself steps out and reminds you of who you could be with a little work."
"The music she played was the kind that sawed through you, cutting into the secret chambers of your heart and setting the sadness free. ... [The] music turned to air, and the air into aching. I swayed on my feet and tried not to breathe it in."
"People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It's that hard. If God said in plain language, "I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die," a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin."
"It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening."
"We loved them [negroes] in the Lord, Brother Gerald said, but they had their own places."
"I couldn't help but envy the way a good storm got everyone's attention."
"If you look carefully at people's eyes the first five seconds they look at you, the truth of their feelings will shine through for just an instant before it flickers away."
"You could not stop a bee from working if you tried. ... They are hard working to the point of killing themselves. Sometimes you want to say to them, 'Relax, take some time off, you deserve it.'"
"Did you know there are thirty-two names for love in one of the Eskimo languages? And we just have this one. We are so limited, you have to use the same word for loving [a person] as you do for loving a Coke with peanuts."
"When they looked at [the Black Madonna of Breznichar in Bohemia], it occurred to them for the first time in their lives that what's divine can come in dark skin. You see, everybody needs a God who looks like them."
"Women make the best beekeepers, 'cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting. It comes from years of loving children and husbands."
"I decided against marrying altogether. There were enough restrictions in my life without someone expecting me to wait on him hand and foot. Not that I'm against marrying, I'm just against how it's set up."
"'Being in love and getting married, now, those are two different things. I was in love once, of course I was. Nobody should go through life without falling in love.'
"'But you didn't love him enough to marry him?'
"'I loved him enough, I just loved my freedom more.'"
"You think to much. It would do you a world of good to stop thinking and just go with your feelings once in a blue moon."
"Have you ever written a letter you knew you could never mail but you needed to write it anyway?"
"August turned [the news] off. Enough was enough. You cannot fix the whole world."
"You can be bad at something, but if you love doing it, that will be enough."
"After you get sung, you can't get unstung no matter how much you whine about it."
"Look, [God], I know you meant well creating the world and all, but how could you let it get away from you like this? How come you couldn't stick with your original idea of paradise? People's lives were a mess."
"The sort of look conjured from power without benefit of love."
"Was it the wounded places down inside people that sought each other out, that bred a kind of love between them?"
"It's something everybody wants - for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters."
"I felt somebody should personally thank every rock out there for the human misery it had absorbed. We should kiss them one by one and say, 'We are sorry, but something strong and lasting had to do this for May, and you are the chosen ones. God bless your rock hearts.'"
"[Her suicide] had been the thing they'd been waiting for half their lives without even realizing it."
"When it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid."
"I could see the point in [imaginary friends]. How a lost part of yourself steps out and reminds you of who you could be with a little work."
"The music she played was the kind that sawed through you, cutting into the secret chambers of your heart and setting the sadness free. ... [The] music turned to air, and the air into aching. I swayed on my feet and tried not to breathe it in."
"People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It's that hard. If God said in plain language, "I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die," a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin."
"It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening."
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Sam Reviews "Dear John" by Nikolas Sparks
I have to admit I'm a sucker for a romance story that doesn't end the way a typical romance story is expected to. I do feel that this story fell a little flat compared to The Notebook (admittedly the only other Nicholas Sparks book I've read so far), but it was still a good story. Sparks' books are made for TV, which explains why so many of his books are movies. The stories are simple but genuine, and make for nice, short, and sweet reads.
"What does it mean to truly love another? There was a time in my life when I thought I knew the answer: It meant that I’d care for Savannah more deeply than I cared for myself and that we’d spend the rest of our lives together. It wouldn’t have taken much. She once told me that the key to happiness was achievable dreams, and hers were nothing out of the ordinary."
"Life in the army didn’t pay much, but considering there was no rent, no food expenses, and really nothing to spend my paychecks on even when I got them, I had money in the bank for the first time. Not a lot, but enough."
" My dad ended every letter with the promise that he would write again soon, and once again, the man didn’t let me down. He was, I’ve long since come to believe, a far better man than I’ll ever be."
"Everyone in the army is forced to grow up, especially if you’re in the infantry like me. ... you’re forced to learn the most important lesson in life, and that’s the fact that you have to live up to your responsibilities, and you’d better do it right. When given an order, you can’t say no. It’s no exaggeration to say that lives are on the line. One wrong decision, and your buddy might die. It’s this fact that makes the army work. That’s the big mistake a lot of people make when they wonder how soldiers can put their lives on the line day after day or how they can fight for something they may not believe in. Not everyone does. I’ve worked with soldiers on all sides of the political spectrum; I’ve met some who hated the army and others who wanted to make it a career. I’ve met geniuses and idiots, but when all is said and done, we do what we do for one another. For friendship. Not for country, not for patriotism, not because we’re programmed killing machines, but because of the guy next to you. You fight for your friend, to keep him alive, and he fights for you, and everything about the army is built on this simple premise."
"I read mainly mysteries and thrillers and books by Stephen King, and I took a particular liking to Carl Hiaasen because his words flowed easily and he always made me laugh. I couldn’t help but think that if schools had assigned these books in English class, we’d have a lot more readers in the world."
"I debated whether or not I should stroll over and introduce myself, then decided against it. They weren’t my type, or more accurately, I probably wasn’t theirs."
“'I’ve always loved people who have this . . . passion for life.'
“'It’s a passion for coins, not life,' I corrected her.
“'It’s the same thing. Passion is passion. It’s the excitement between the tedious spaces, and it doesn’t matter where it’s directed.'”
"Passion and satisfaction go hand in hand, and without them, any happiness is only temporary, because there’s nothing to make it last."
"A person with autism lives in his own world, while a person with Asperger’s lives in our world, in a way of his own choosing."
"I realized, it [the Asberger's diagnosis] might explain two questions that had always plagued me regarding my mother: What had she seen in him? And why had she left? ... I could envision a quiet man who struck up a conversation about his rare coin collection with a poor young waitress at a diner, a woman who spent her evenings lying in bed and dreaming of a better life. Maybe she flirted, or maybe she didn’t, but he was attracted to her and continued to show up at the diner. Over time, she might have sensed the kindness and patience in him that he would later use in raising me. It was possible that she interpreted his quiet nature accurately as well and knew he would be slow to anger and never violent. Even without love, it might have been enough, so she agreed to marry him, thinking they would sell the coins and live, if not happily ever after, at least comfortably ever after. She got pregnant, and later, when she learned that he couldn’t even fathom the idea of selling the coins, she realized that she’d be stuck with a husband who showed little interest in anything she did. Maybe her loneliness got the better of her, or maybe she was just selfish, but either way she wanted out, and after the baby was born, she took the first opportunity to leave."
"It’s strange how knowledge changes perception."
"Yeah, it’ll be hard, but life moves fast-we’ll see each other again. I know that. I can feel that. Just like I can feel how much you care for me and how much I love you. I know in my heart that this isn’t over, and that we’ll make it through this. Lots of couples do. Granted, lots of couples don’t, but they don’t have what we have.” I wanted to believe her. I wanted it more than anything, but I wondered if it was really that simple."
"As tender and exciting as it [making love for the first time] had been, I couldn’t help wondering whether there had been a trace of desperation in our actions, as if we were both clinging to the hope that this would sustain our relationship through whatever the future would bring."
"As we were drifting apart, I was becoming more desperate to save what we once had shared; like a vicious circle, however, my desperation made us drift apart even further."
"When I close my eyes, I see your face; when I walk, it’s almost as if I can feel your hand in mine. Those things are still real to me, but where they once brought comfort, now they leave me with an ache."
"...the sensation of her body against mine was like a glass of cool water on a hot summer day."
"I knew there were words to comfort Savannah, but as usual, I didn’t know what to say."
"I know she loves me, but she’s never loved me the way she loved you. She never had that burning passion for me, but we were making a good life together."
"...the relationship between Savannah and me would never be what it once was. We’d met at a carefree time, a moment full of promise; in its place now were the harsh lessons of the real world."
"What does it mean to truly love another? There was a time in my life when I thought I knew the answer: It meant that I’d care for Savannah more deeply than I cared for myself and that we’d spend the rest of our lives together. It wouldn’t have taken much. She once told me that the key to happiness was achievable dreams, and hers were nothing out of the ordinary."
"Life in the army didn’t pay much, but considering there was no rent, no food expenses, and really nothing to spend my paychecks on even when I got them, I had money in the bank for the first time. Not a lot, but enough."
" My dad ended every letter with the promise that he would write again soon, and once again, the man didn’t let me down. He was, I’ve long since come to believe, a far better man than I’ll ever be."
"Everyone in the army is forced to grow up, especially if you’re in the infantry like me. ... you’re forced to learn the most important lesson in life, and that’s the fact that you have to live up to your responsibilities, and you’d better do it right. When given an order, you can’t say no. It’s no exaggeration to say that lives are on the line. One wrong decision, and your buddy might die. It’s this fact that makes the army work. That’s the big mistake a lot of people make when they wonder how soldiers can put their lives on the line day after day or how they can fight for something they may not believe in. Not everyone does. I’ve worked with soldiers on all sides of the political spectrum; I’ve met some who hated the army and others who wanted to make it a career. I’ve met geniuses and idiots, but when all is said and done, we do what we do for one another. For friendship. Not for country, not for patriotism, not because we’re programmed killing machines, but because of the guy next to you. You fight for your friend, to keep him alive, and he fights for you, and everything about the army is built on this simple premise."
"I read mainly mysteries and thrillers and books by Stephen King, and I took a particular liking to Carl Hiaasen because his words flowed easily and he always made me laugh. I couldn’t help but think that if schools had assigned these books in English class, we’d have a lot more readers in the world."
"I debated whether or not I should stroll over and introduce myself, then decided against it. They weren’t my type, or more accurately, I probably wasn’t theirs."
“'I’ve always loved people who have this . . . passion for life.'
“'It’s a passion for coins, not life,' I corrected her.
“'It’s the same thing. Passion is passion. It’s the excitement between the tedious spaces, and it doesn’t matter where it’s directed.'”
"Passion and satisfaction go hand in hand, and without them, any happiness is only temporary, because there’s nothing to make it last."
"A person with autism lives in his own world, while a person with Asperger’s lives in our world, in a way of his own choosing."
"I realized, it [the Asberger's diagnosis] might explain two questions that had always plagued me regarding my mother: What had she seen in him? And why had she left? ... I could envision a quiet man who struck up a conversation about his rare coin collection with a poor young waitress at a diner, a woman who spent her evenings lying in bed and dreaming of a better life. Maybe she flirted, or maybe she didn’t, but he was attracted to her and continued to show up at the diner. Over time, she might have sensed the kindness and patience in him that he would later use in raising me. It was possible that she interpreted his quiet nature accurately as well and knew he would be slow to anger and never violent. Even without love, it might have been enough, so she agreed to marry him, thinking they would sell the coins and live, if not happily ever after, at least comfortably ever after. She got pregnant, and later, when she learned that he couldn’t even fathom the idea of selling the coins, she realized that she’d be stuck with a husband who showed little interest in anything she did. Maybe her loneliness got the better of her, or maybe she was just selfish, but either way she wanted out, and after the baby was born, she took the first opportunity to leave."
"It’s strange how knowledge changes perception."
"Yeah, it’ll be hard, but life moves fast-we’ll see each other again. I know that. I can feel that. Just like I can feel how much you care for me and how much I love you. I know in my heart that this isn’t over, and that we’ll make it through this. Lots of couples do. Granted, lots of couples don’t, but they don’t have what we have.” I wanted to believe her. I wanted it more than anything, but I wondered if it was really that simple."
"As tender and exciting as it [making love for the first time] had been, I couldn’t help wondering whether there had been a trace of desperation in our actions, as if we were both clinging to the hope that this would sustain our relationship through whatever the future would bring."
"As we were drifting apart, I was becoming more desperate to save what we once had shared; like a vicious circle, however, my desperation made us drift apart even further."
"When I close my eyes, I see your face; when I walk, it’s almost as if I can feel your hand in mine. Those things are still real to me, but where they once brought comfort, now they leave me with an ache."
"...the sensation of her body against mine was like a glass of cool water on a hot summer day."
"I knew there were words to comfort Savannah, but as usual, I didn’t know what to say."
"I know she loves me, but she’s never loved me the way she loved you. She never had that burning passion for me, but we were making a good life together."
"...the relationship between Savannah and me would never be what it once was. We’d met at a carefree time, a moment full of promise; in its place now were the harsh lessons of the real world."
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Sam Reviews "Lost in Translation - A Life in a New Language" by Eva Hoffman
"But the wonder is what you can make a paradise out of."
"I observe, as long as possible, the delicious process of falling asleep. That awareness of subsiding into a different state is also happiness."
"To be an adult, I conclude, is to be close to death."
"Throughout my childhood and youth, she [my mother] is quite set on not teaching me how to cook or sew, lest such skills prevent me from turning to more interesting things."
"I want to tell A Story, Every Story, everything all at once ... I try to roll all the sounds into one, to accumulate more and more syllables ... the sounds have to resemble real syllables ... they can't disintegrate into brute noise for then I wouldn't be talking at all. I want articulation - but articulation that says the whole world at once."
"What I really want is to be transported into a space in which everything is as distinct, complete, and intelligible as in the stories I read."
"The more words I have, the more distinct, precise my perceptions become - and such lucidity is a form of joy."
"Nothing fully exists until it is articulated."
"Primitive means vulgar or unenlightened."
"...a weeping willow by the pond that is just about the most graceful thing I know: it's so melancholy, and melancholy is synonymous with beautiful."
"To me, it's natural that a city should be very old... Age is one of the things that encloses me with safety; Cracow has always existed, it's a given, it doesn't change much. It has layers and layers of reality."
"My mother listens to the tales of those boyfriends with a sort of older woman tolerance."
"America is always ready to go to war, in contrast to those Soviet tanks, which are always wreathed in flowers and peaceful intentions. In a magazine, I read an article on lynching in the South and another one on the poverty of American workers. I also read Uncle Tom's Cabin, which makes me weep with frustration at the injustices perpetrated upon Tom and his family; perhaps America is a cruel place full of cold-hearted people."
"My idea of grace is fulfilling your talent completely, and my only idea of sin is misusing that gift. The dread of not becoming completely what you can be is so strong that sometimes later in life it will paralyze me. How horrible to do the wrong thing, the thing that doesn't express your essence - and how horrible to fall short of your powers, or to discover that they might be more meager than their seemingly limitless potential!"
"I stroke up images of Marek - they are not memories yet, he is too much alive within me - as if my will could made him materialize."
"Even fulfillment of a fantasy, it turns out, is different grin a fantasy of fulfillment."
"I feel that satisfaction and contentment are surely possible - more, that they're everyone's inalienable right - possibly even mine."
"They were more generous toward me than I was toward them; but then, a sense of disadvantage and inferiority is not a position from which one can feel the largeheartedness of true generosity."
"If you have no money, no language, and no accredited profession, what exactly do you turn your hand to?"
"So many people have made good; if you don't, it appears that you have only yourself to blame. This - corrosive logic - is the other side of the New World dream, the seemingly self- inflicted nightmare in which you toss and turn in gut-eating guilt."
"I don't have a silk slip, don't like to put on makeup, and these elaborate preparations are somehow disturbing to me, as if we were in a harem and remodeling ourselves into a special species - "girls" - so that we can appeal to that other, alien species, boys. They are supposed to come and get us, of course, but only after we have made ourselves into these appetizing and slightly garish bonbons. ... We're not going to show them who we are, we're going to show them what they want."
"I'm no colder than I've ever been, but I'm learning to be less demonstrative. I learn this from a teacher who, after contemplating the gesticulations with which I help myself describe the digestive system of a frog, tells me to "sit on my hands and then try talking." I learn my new reserve from people who take a step back when we talk, because I'm standing too close, crowding them. Cultural distances are different, I later learn in a sociology class, but I know it already. I learn restraint from Penny, who looks offended when I shake her by the arm in excitement, as if my gesture had been one of aggression instead of friendliness. I learn it from a girl who pulls away when I hook my arm through hers as we walk down the street - this movement of friendly intimacy is an embarrassment to her.
"I learn also that certain kinds of truth are impolite. One shouldn't criticize the person one is with, at least not directly. You shouldn't say, "You are wrong about that" - though you must say, "On the other hand, there is that to consider." You shouldn't say, "This doesn't look good on you," though you may say, "I like you better in the that other outfit." I learn to tone down my sharpness, to do a more careful conversational minuet.
"Perhaps my mother is right, after all; perhaps I'm becoming colder. After a while, emotion follows action, response grows warmer or cooler according to gesture. I'm more careful about what I say, how loud I laugh, whether I give vent to grief."
"'This is a society in which you are who you think you are. Nobody gives you your identity here, you have to reinvent yourself every day.'
"He is right, I suspect, but I can't figure out how this is done. You just say what you are and everyone believes you? ... But how do I choose from identity options available all around me? I feel, once again, as I did when facing those ten brands of toothpaste - faint from excess, paralyzed by choice."
"I try to remember what Mrs. Steiner - who with her daughters has guided me toward this step - said about living my own life. It is not so simple for me to accept this idea, to extricate myself from the mesh of family need and love, to believe in the merits of a separate life."
"I have been given the blessings and the terrors of multiplicity. ... If I want to assimilate into my generation, my time, I have to assimilate the multiple perspectives and their constant shifting. Who, among my peers, is sure of what is success and what failure? Who would want to be sure? Who is sure of purposes, meanings, national goals?"
"We've entered a period during which these very friends of mine will try to unwrap, unravel, and demolish every norm passed on to them from their parents and the culture at large; for a while, they will use their inheritance and their sense of entitlement for that most luxurious of rights, the right to turn down one's privileges; for a while at least, they will refuse to inherit the earth."
"This vigorous, handsome man is somebody I don't know at all, but he carries within himself a person whom I once knew completely."
"One cannot go against the grain of one's temperament forever. It's time again to rediscover the springs of my desires and love and appetite. ... It will be a complicated task, trying to break the carapace of fear and will, but by now, I know that if I don't set out to do it, I run the true peril of living an alien life."
"My father's fatalism, I explain to myself carefully, was perfectly suited to his conditions. But in my less threatening world, I need to develop the art of optimism and of benign expectations. ... There's no need to be sucked back into the vortex of these atavistic anxieties; they're misplaced and will only harm you; this Pavlovian pessimism will prevent you from rational planning, and from showing a cheerful, confident face, which is what you need, what your world requires."
"I've become a more self-controlled person over the years. ... I don't allow myself to be blown about this way and that helplessly; I've learned how to use the mechanisms of my will, how to look for symptom and root cause before sadness or happiness overwhelm me. I've gained some control, and control is something I need more than my mother did. I have more of a public life, in which it's important to appear strong."
"It's shameful to admit that sometimes things can go very wrong; It's shameful to choices that sometimes we have no control."
"The French, in the eighteenth century, classified ambition - a new phenomenon in the typography of behavior and emotion - as an illness."
"I observe, as long as possible, the delicious process of falling asleep. That awareness of subsiding into a different state is also happiness."
"To be an adult, I conclude, is to be close to death."
"Throughout my childhood and youth, she [my mother] is quite set on not teaching me how to cook or sew, lest such skills prevent me from turning to more interesting things."
"I want to tell A Story, Every Story, everything all at once ... I try to roll all the sounds into one, to accumulate more and more syllables ... the sounds have to resemble real syllables ... they can't disintegrate into brute noise for then I wouldn't be talking at all. I want articulation - but articulation that says the whole world at once."
"What I really want is to be transported into a space in which everything is as distinct, complete, and intelligible as in the stories I read."
"The more words I have, the more distinct, precise my perceptions become - and such lucidity is a form of joy."
"Nothing fully exists until it is articulated."
"Primitive means vulgar or unenlightened."
"...a weeping willow by the pond that is just about the most graceful thing I know: it's so melancholy, and melancholy is synonymous with beautiful."
"To me, it's natural that a city should be very old... Age is one of the things that encloses me with safety; Cracow has always existed, it's a given, it doesn't change much. It has layers and layers of reality."
"My mother listens to the tales of those boyfriends with a sort of older woman tolerance."
"America is always ready to go to war, in contrast to those Soviet tanks, which are always wreathed in flowers and peaceful intentions. In a magazine, I read an article on lynching in the South and another one on the poverty of American workers. I also read Uncle Tom's Cabin, which makes me weep with frustration at the injustices perpetrated upon Tom and his family; perhaps America is a cruel place full of cold-hearted people."
"My idea of grace is fulfilling your talent completely, and my only idea of sin is misusing that gift. The dread of not becoming completely what you can be is so strong that sometimes later in life it will paralyze me. How horrible to do the wrong thing, the thing that doesn't express your essence - and how horrible to fall short of your powers, or to discover that they might be more meager than their seemingly limitless potential!"
"I stroke up images of Marek - they are not memories yet, he is too much alive within me - as if my will could made him materialize."
"Even fulfillment of a fantasy, it turns out, is different grin a fantasy of fulfillment."
"I feel that satisfaction and contentment are surely possible - more, that they're everyone's inalienable right - possibly even mine."
"They were more generous toward me than I was toward them; but then, a sense of disadvantage and inferiority is not a position from which one can feel the largeheartedness of true generosity."
"If you have no money, no language, and no accredited profession, what exactly do you turn your hand to?"
"So many people have made good; if you don't, it appears that you have only yourself to blame. This - corrosive logic - is the other side of the New World dream, the seemingly self- inflicted nightmare in which you toss and turn in gut-eating guilt."
"I don't have a silk slip, don't like to put on makeup, and these elaborate preparations are somehow disturbing to me, as if we were in a harem and remodeling ourselves into a special species - "girls" - so that we can appeal to that other, alien species, boys. They are supposed to come and get us, of course, but only after we have made ourselves into these appetizing and slightly garish bonbons. ... We're not going to show them who we are, we're going to show them what they want."
"I'm no colder than I've ever been, but I'm learning to be less demonstrative. I learn this from a teacher who, after contemplating the gesticulations with which I help myself describe the digestive system of a frog, tells me to "sit on my hands and then try talking." I learn my new reserve from people who take a step back when we talk, because I'm standing too close, crowding them. Cultural distances are different, I later learn in a sociology class, but I know it already. I learn restraint from Penny, who looks offended when I shake her by the arm in excitement, as if my gesture had been one of aggression instead of friendliness. I learn it from a girl who pulls away when I hook my arm through hers as we walk down the street - this movement of friendly intimacy is an embarrassment to her.
"I learn also that certain kinds of truth are impolite. One shouldn't criticize the person one is with, at least not directly. You shouldn't say, "You are wrong about that" - though you must say, "On the other hand, there is that to consider." You shouldn't say, "This doesn't look good on you," though you may say, "I like you better in the that other outfit." I learn to tone down my sharpness, to do a more careful conversational minuet.
"Perhaps my mother is right, after all; perhaps I'm becoming colder. After a while, emotion follows action, response grows warmer or cooler according to gesture. I'm more careful about what I say, how loud I laugh, whether I give vent to grief."
"'This is a society in which you are who you think you are. Nobody gives you your identity here, you have to reinvent yourself every day.'
"He is right, I suspect, but I can't figure out how this is done. You just say what you are and everyone believes you? ... But how do I choose from identity options available all around me? I feel, once again, as I did when facing those ten brands of toothpaste - faint from excess, paralyzed by choice."
"I try to remember what Mrs. Steiner - who with her daughters has guided me toward this step - said about living my own life. It is not so simple for me to accept this idea, to extricate myself from the mesh of family need and love, to believe in the merits of a separate life."
"I have been given the blessings and the terrors of multiplicity. ... If I want to assimilate into my generation, my time, I have to assimilate the multiple perspectives and their constant shifting. Who, among my peers, is sure of what is success and what failure? Who would want to be sure? Who is sure of purposes, meanings, national goals?"
"We've entered a period during which these very friends of mine will try to unwrap, unravel, and demolish every norm passed on to them from their parents and the culture at large; for a while, they will use their inheritance and their sense of entitlement for that most luxurious of rights, the right to turn down one's privileges; for a while at least, they will refuse to inherit the earth."
"This vigorous, handsome man is somebody I don't know at all, but he carries within himself a person whom I once knew completely."
"One cannot go against the grain of one's temperament forever. It's time again to rediscover the springs of my desires and love and appetite. ... It will be a complicated task, trying to break the carapace of fear and will, but by now, I know that if I don't set out to do it, I run the true peril of living an alien life."
"My father's fatalism, I explain to myself carefully, was perfectly suited to his conditions. But in my less threatening world, I need to develop the art of optimism and of benign expectations. ... There's no need to be sucked back into the vortex of these atavistic anxieties; they're misplaced and will only harm you; this Pavlovian pessimism will prevent you from rational planning, and from showing a cheerful, confident face, which is what you need, what your world requires."
"I've become a more self-controlled person over the years. ... I don't allow myself to be blown about this way and that helplessly; I've learned how to use the mechanisms of my will, how to look for symptom and root cause before sadness or happiness overwhelm me. I've gained some control, and control is something I need more than my mother did. I have more of a public life, in which it's important to appear strong."
"It's shameful to admit that sometimes things can go very wrong; It's shameful to choices that sometimes we have no control."
"The French, in the eighteenth century, classified ambition - a new phenomenon in the typography of behavior and emotion - as an illness."
Saturday, May 13, 2017
Sam Reviews "Will Grayson, Will Grayson" by John Green and David Levithan
I'd like to start by saying that I've always been a harsh critic of young adult books, even when I was the target reading age. So, my personal review and opinion of this books is as follows: it wasn't bad. There was a serious "cheese factor" when it came to Tiny Cooper. Some of his quirks I could appreciate but a lot of his quirks were over the top and (in my opinion) unrealistic. I didn't feel the issues tackled in this book were especially serious or life altering. And, despite my love of musicals, I didn't see the "genius" in the book's showcased musical, which was disappointing. I do feel teenagers will appreciate this more than I do, as I tend to prefer books with more mature themes. This just kind of seemed like a little snippet out of two people's diaries. It wasn't especially moving or educational, it was just a nice story.
The opening quote, "You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose" is from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy - unless it's a really old quote I just heard on the show first.
"I feel bad for her - I do. A damn shame, really, that I had to have a mother. It can't be easy having me for a son. Nothing can prepare someone for that kind of disappointment."
"I don't know if there's anything more horrifying than a goth girl getting all cuddly."
"I don't even picture it. Instead I'm in it. How I would feel with him here. That peace. It would be so happy, and it makes me sad because it only exists in words."
"He is both the source of my happiness and the one I want to share it with."
"You know how people are always saying your parents are always right? "Follow your parents' advice; they know what's good for you." And you know how no one ever listens to this advice, because even if it's true it's so annoying and condescending that it just makes you want to go, like, develop a meth addiction and have unprotected sex with eighty- seven thousand anonymous partners? Well, I listen to my parents. They know what's good for me. I'll listen to anyone, frankly. Almost everyone knows better than I do."
"In the ensuing silence, I have the time to contemplate the word cute - how dismissive it is, how it's the equivalent of calling someone little, how it makes a person into a baby, how the word is a neon sign burning through the dark reading "Feel Bad About Yourself"."
"Anything that happens all at once is just as likely to unhappen all at once."
"Since they are theater people, they are all talking. All of them. Simultaneously. They do not need to be heard; they only need to be speaking."
"I don't just feel depressed - instead, it is like the depression is the core of me, of every part of me, from my mind to my bones. If he got blue, I got black. That I hate those pills so much, because I know how much I rely on them to live. No, I couldn't say any of this. Because, when it comes down to it, nobody wants to hear it. No matter how much they like you or love you, they don't want to hear it."
"Your mom and I had dinner with the Porters on their yacht years ago, and in the span of a single meal - in that two hours - the boat went from feeling like the most extraordinarily luxurious experience to just being a boat. You're our yacht, bud. All that money that would have gone into a yacht, all that time we would have spent traveling the world? Instead, we got you. It turns out that the yacht is a boat. But you - you can't be bought on credit."
"Such is life. We grow up. Planets like Tiny get new moons. Moons like me get new planets."
"If you try to ruin someone's life, it only gets better. You just don't get to be a part of it."
"Shouldn't letting go be painless if you've never learned how to hold on?"
"I am going to stay the same, and the same, and the same, until I die of it."
"I'm not saying I'm innocent. I'm saying you're guilty too."
"...When did who you want to screw become the whole game? Since when is the person you want to screw the only person you get to love? ... Who even gives a fuck about sex?! People act like it's the most important thing humans do, but come on. How can our sentient fucking lives revolve around something slugs can do. ... You know what's important? Who would you die for? Who would you wake up at five forty-five in the morning for even though you don't even know why he needs you?..."
"Being in a relationship, that's something you choose. Being friends, that's just something you are."
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." - Oscar Wilde
"The pure and simple truth, is rarely pure and never simple. What's a boy to do, when lies and truth are both sinful."
"That's it - hundreds of texts and conversations, thousands upon thousands of words spoken and sent, all boiled down into a single line. Is that what relationships become? A reduced version of the hurt, nothing else let in."
"We acknowledge that being the person God made you cannot separate you from God's love."
The opening quote, "You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose" is from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy - unless it's a really old quote I just heard on the show first.
"I feel bad for her - I do. A damn shame, really, that I had to have a mother. It can't be easy having me for a son. Nothing can prepare someone for that kind of disappointment."
"I don't know if there's anything more horrifying than a goth girl getting all cuddly."
"I don't even picture it. Instead I'm in it. How I would feel with him here. That peace. It would be so happy, and it makes me sad because it only exists in words."
"He is both the source of my happiness and the one I want to share it with."
"You know how people are always saying your parents are always right? "Follow your parents' advice; they know what's good for you." And you know how no one ever listens to this advice, because even if it's true it's so annoying and condescending that it just makes you want to go, like, develop a meth addiction and have unprotected sex with eighty- seven thousand anonymous partners? Well, I listen to my parents. They know what's good for me. I'll listen to anyone, frankly. Almost everyone knows better than I do."
"In the ensuing silence, I have the time to contemplate the word cute - how dismissive it is, how it's the equivalent of calling someone little, how it makes a person into a baby, how the word is a neon sign burning through the dark reading "Feel Bad About Yourself"."
"Anything that happens all at once is just as likely to unhappen all at once."
"Since they are theater people, they are all talking. All of them. Simultaneously. They do not need to be heard; they only need to be speaking."
"I don't just feel depressed - instead, it is like the depression is the core of me, of every part of me, from my mind to my bones. If he got blue, I got black. That I hate those pills so much, because I know how much I rely on them to live. No, I couldn't say any of this. Because, when it comes down to it, nobody wants to hear it. No matter how much they like you or love you, they don't want to hear it."
"Your mom and I had dinner with the Porters on their yacht years ago, and in the span of a single meal - in that two hours - the boat went from feeling like the most extraordinarily luxurious experience to just being a boat. You're our yacht, bud. All that money that would have gone into a yacht, all that time we would have spent traveling the world? Instead, we got you. It turns out that the yacht is a boat. But you - you can't be bought on credit."
"Such is life. We grow up. Planets like Tiny get new moons. Moons like me get new planets."
"If you try to ruin someone's life, it only gets better. You just don't get to be a part of it."
"Shouldn't letting go be painless if you've never learned how to hold on?"
"I am going to stay the same, and the same, and the same, until I die of it."
"I'm not saying I'm innocent. I'm saying you're guilty too."
"...When did who you want to screw become the whole game? Since when is the person you want to screw the only person you get to love? ... Who even gives a fuck about sex?! People act like it's the most important thing humans do, but come on. How can our sentient fucking lives revolve around something slugs can do. ... You know what's important? Who would you die for? Who would you wake up at five forty-five in the morning for even though you don't even know why he needs you?..."
"Being in a relationship, that's something you choose. Being friends, that's just something you are."
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." - Oscar Wilde
"The pure and simple truth, is rarely pure and never simple. What's a boy to do, when lies and truth are both sinful."
"That's it - hundreds of texts and conversations, thousands upon thousands of words spoken and sent, all boiled down into a single line. Is that what relationships become? A reduced version of the hurt, nothing else let in."
"We acknowledge that being the person God made you cannot separate you from God's love."
"In some ways, you are who you are because other people observe you; but in some ways, you are who you are in spite of other people's observations of you."
Monday, May 8, 2017
Sam Reviews "There I Go Again" by William Daniels
There's a few three or less star reviews of this book because people wanted it to be all about Boy Meets World. I am one of the top die hard fans of Boy Meets World and Mr. Feeny, but it's important to remember this is William Daniels' autobiography of how he "Came To Be" all these beloved characters. This book was not advertised as "All the Fun Things That Happened Behind the Scenes of Boy Meets World". This is a book about a man, and the life he lived, while also portraying characters on TV he didn't expect to be very popular at all.
This book was everything I wanted it to be: the story of William Daniels and an inside view of which roles he enjoyed and took pride in. I learned more from this book than I probably ever would have on my own time and now I have a handful of movies and shows to add to my "to watch" list. I appreciate William Daniels' honesty and humanity in this book, and I'm glad I took the time to read it.
"Whatever success I've had in my life - and I've had considerable success - has come to me almost accidentally. ... I'm left with the feeling that none of my success was really due to me.
"When I'm sent a script to consider, I only see its problems, not its strengths. I have almost always had to be talked into a role, even when the project turned out to be tremendously successful. I've been known to go to the wrong theater to audition for a role I subsequently got - and played for years. Once, while auditioning for a musical, I forgot the lyrics of a song I'd sung for months on Broadway; they hired me anyway. I insisted on having no billing on a series I thought was silly, and that series (Knight Rider) ran for years and even after all this time I still get fan mail.
"I went 'ass backwards' into just about everything - and what a lucky guy I've been."
"Many of us without name recognition make a fine living, put our kids through college, and, if we're lucky, enjoy long careers precisely because we can play many different kinds of roles. ... As a character actor I became a start, but a very small one, and I saw time and again how the big stars - the leading men - surrounded by sycophants, lost their sense of reality and then lost everything..."
"When you think about it, it's a huge compliment for an actor to be remembered for a role he played. It means that ... I helped create a character, a person utterly different from myself, yet someone real enough to lodge in someone's memory."
"Sometimes kids can suffer without even knowing they are suffering."
As I'm reading the chapters about his parents it's all so sad. His mother was this overbearing pageant mom basically and his dad was just a very depressed man. There's a scene in Boy Meets World, Season One, Episode Three "Father Knows Less" where Mr. Feeny explains how his dad wouldn't let him stay up to hear Truman announce the end of the war, not for any good reason, but because education was important. And I always remember that scene resonating with me and I wonder if it's because some of the sadness about it was somewhat truthful to how his dad probably was as a person.
"I know, at this point, I must sound like some kind of idiot. Did it never occur to me to tell my mother I didn't want to do this? The kindest thing I can say on my own behalf is that I was a young man who, from a very early age, was taught to take directions from a mother I must have loved or feared very much. Probably both. This was the pattern of my life throughout my childhood, in the army, and even in college: following someone else's instructions or suggestions without instigating anything myself. I noticed that I was able to break the pattern when I finally learned to say no, and that became a life-long pattern in and of itself."
"'Life with Father' ... was a snapshot of a family in the 1890s headed by a father whose impossible standards create humorous situations with all of the other characters in the show. It was the first sitcom, if you will. And America loved it."
"Then it struck me, right there on Fifth Avenue, the hypocrisy of confessing to something that was so lovely and innocent. It was absurd. [sex with his girlfriend]
"And for me that was the end of Catholicism, with its idea of original sin."
"There is no greater satisfaction for an actor than performing before a live audience, to cope with an audience from the beginning of a performance to the end. First they may be coughing, rustling in their seats, flipping pages in their programs, and wondering if the play is going to be worth the price of the tickets. And then you slowly but surely command their attention with your stage presence, your focus, and your conviction. Finally it is so quiet you know you have their full attention. You can let your acting impulses take over and carry you wherever they will, for as far as the audience is concerned you can do no wrong."
"I never played a bricklayer, so 'Life with Father' turned out to be life with a kind of 'father' indeed."
There was a part in the chapter "Go West, Young Man, to Northwestern" where William talks about Bonnie deciding to go to New York and he had to decide to go with her or stay at school on scholarship to complete his Master's degree. He followed Bonnie - again I wonder if the writers of Boy Meets World were inspired by some of William Daniels' stories seeing as how this is basically how the show ended.
I never put the dates together but the fact that William Daniels knew Marilyn Monroe is pretty amazing. And he worked with Audrey Hepburn.
It's crazy that his wife carried a baby a month longer than she should have and lost him at a doctor's judgement
"My good friend Gene Wilder stepped in and acted as my 'surrogate' to help Bonnie bring Robert home." - So casually mentioned.
[On adoption] "Those bumbles can, I'm told and believe, with proper care and love, turn into very nice people." -Edward Albee, who was himself adopted.
Look into the movies: A Thousand Clowns, Two For The Road, The Presidents Analyst, and 1776.
I wasn't expecting there to be pictures in this book, but boy am I glad there are! He's hardly recognizable, if the caption wasn't there I'd doubt myself haha (there's more pics in the book than I posted). But I also just had to say how amused I am that young William Daniels looks pretty similar to Will Friedle when he played Eric!
This book was everything I wanted it to be: the story of William Daniels and an inside view of which roles he enjoyed and took pride in. I learned more from this book than I probably ever would have on my own time and now I have a handful of movies and shows to add to my "to watch" list. I appreciate William Daniels' honesty and humanity in this book, and I'm glad I took the time to read it.
"Whatever success I've had in my life - and I've had considerable success - has come to me almost accidentally. ... I'm left with the feeling that none of my success was really due to me.
"When I'm sent a script to consider, I only see its problems, not its strengths. I have almost always had to be talked into a role, even when the project turned out to be tremendously successful. I've been known to go to the wrong theater to audition for a role I subsequently got - and played for years. Once, while auditioning for a musical, I forgot the lyrics of a song I'd sung for months on Broadway; they hired me anyway. I insisted on having no billing on a series I thought was silly, and that series (Knight Rider) ran for years and even after all this time I still get fan mail.
"I went 'ass backwards' into just about everything - and what a lucky guy I've been."
"Many of us without name recognition make a fine living, put our kids through college, and, if we're lucky, enjoy long careers precisely because we can play many different kinds of roles. ... As a character actor I became a start, but a very small one, and I saw time and again how the big stars - the leading men - surrounded by sycophants, lost their sense of reality and then lost everything..."
"When you think about it, it's a huge compliment for an actor to be remembered for a role he played. It means that ... I helped create a character, a person utterly different from myself, yet someone real enough to lodge in someone's memory."
"Sometimes kids can suffer without even knowing they are suffering."
As I'm reading the chapters about his parents it's all so sad. His mother was this overbearing pageant mom basically and his dad was just a very depressed man. There's a scene in Boy Meets World, Season One, Episode Three "Father Knows Less" where Mr. Feeny explains how his dad wouldn't let him stay up to hear Truman announce the end of the war, not for any good reason, but because education was important. And I always remember that scene resonating with me and I wonder if it's because some of the sadness about it was somewhat truthful to how his dad probably was as a person.
"I know, at this point, I must sound like some kind of idiot. Did it never occur to me to tell my mother I didn't want to do this? The kindest thing I can say on my own behalf is that I was a young man who, from a very early age, was taught to take directions from a mother I must have loved or feared very much. Probably both. This was the pattern of my life throughout my childhood, in the army, and even in college: following someone else's instructions or suggestions without instigating anything myself. I noticed that I was able to break the pattern when I finally learned to say no, and that became a life-long pattern in and of itself."
"'Life with Father' ... was a snapshot of a family in the 1890s headed by a father whose impossible standards create humorous situations with all of the other characters in the show. It was the first sitcom, if you will. And America loved it."
"Then it struck me, right there on Fifth Avenue, the hypocrisy of confessing to something that was so lovely and innocent. It was absurd. [sex with his girlfriend]
"And for me that was the end of Catholicism, with its idea of original sin."
"There is no greater satisfaction for an actor than performing before a live audience, to cope with an audience from the beginning of a performance to the end. First they may be coughing, rustling in their seats, flipping pages in their programs, and wondering if the play is going to be worth the price of the tickets. And then you slowly but surely command their attention with your stage presence, your focus, and your conviction. Finally it is so quiet you know you have their full attention. You can let your acting impulses take over and carry you wherever they will, for as far as the audience is concerned you can do no wrong."
"I never played a bricklayer, so 'Life with Father' turned out to be life with a kind of 'father' indeed."
There was a part in the chapter "Go West, Young Man, to Northwestern" where William talks about Bonnie deciding to go to New York and he had to decide to go with her or stay at school on scholarship to complete his Master's degree. He followed Bonnie - again I wonder if the writers of Boy Meets World were inspired by some of William Daniels' stories seeing as how this is basically how the show ended.
I never put the dates together but the fact that William Daniels knew Marilyn Monroe is pretty amazing. And he worked with Audrey Hepburn.
It's crazy that his wife carried a baby a month longer than she should have and lost him at a doctor's judgement
"My good friend Gene Wilder stepped in and acted as my 'surrogate' to help Bonnie bring Robert home." - So casually mentioned.
[On adoption] "Those bumbles can, I'm told and believe, with proper care and love, turn into very nice people." -Edward Albee, who was himself adopted.
Look into the movies: A Thousand Clowns, Two For The Road, The Presidents Analyst, and 1776.
I wasn't expecting there to be pictures in this book, but boy am I glad there are! He's hardly recognizable, if the caption wasn't there I'd doubt myself haha (there's more pics in the book than I posted). But I also just had to say how amused I am that young William Daniels looks pretty similar to Will Friedle when he played Eric!
I was thinking about when I was a boy just a little younger than you are.
There was a war going on.
It's hard to picture you as a boy.
Did your parents call you Mr.
Feeny? I used to ask my mother why I could only have butter on my toast two mornings a week and she said, "Because of the war in Europe.
" And I wondered why there was never enough candy and she told me, "Because of the war in Europe.
" oh, and I longed for a pair of sneakers.
But I couldn't have any.
Those Europe guys stole 'em? No, no.
The rubber had to be diverted to the war effort.
There was a version of a sneaker available but it was made out of recycled tires and left black marks on the gym floor.
Hey, you took gym? They made me.
Anyway, I prayed every night for an end to the war in Europe.
Not from any altruistic desire for world peace.
Just a boy's selfish wish for buttered toast and sneakers.
Then I heard that Mr.
Truman was going on the radio that night to announce the end of the war.
And I went home and asked my father if I could stay up with him to hear the president.
Do you know what he said? I'm guessing it's either yes or no but we both know how well I do on multiple choice.
He said "Tomorrow's a school day.
"l don't want you up with me.
" So you're saying your dad really knew the value of education.
No, I'm saying my father didn't want me hanging around with him and his drinking buddies.
As a result, the next day at school I was rested and fresh and ready to learn.
I see your point, Mr.
Feeny.
No, I don't think you really do, Cory.
What do you suppose I learned in school that day? I know this has got to be a biggie Iike the Magna Carta or something.
I have no idea what you learned that day.
Neither do l.
You see, Mr.
Matthews education is not about obscure facts and little test scores.
Education is about the overall effect of years of slow absorption concepts, philosophies approaches to problem-solving.
The whole process is so grand and all-encompassing that it really can't be threatened by the occasional late-night no-hitter.
It is important that a boy spend time with his father.
Buthow do you know that? Your dad didn't let you stay up with him.
That's precisely Why I do know.
ALAN: Cory! over here, Dad having a drink with Mr.
Feeny.
It's just apple juice.
How's the store? oh, the store is fine.
Just a small grease fire at the rotisserie.
Tomorrow we'll run a special on blackened chicken.
-Alan.
-George.
Better come in, kiddo.
About time for bed.
Sure, Dad.
Umare we ever gonna study that European sneaker war? I think you'll get to it sometime in the course of your education.
Good, 'cause it sounded really interesting.
oh, it was.
Well, good night, Mr.
Feeny.
Good night, Mr.
Matthews.
Ahem.
I, uh just want you to know I'm gonna have him in bed every night when he's supposed to be.
Well, I want you to know that if I did have a son and the opportunity presented itself to wake him up to watch a baseball game or to listen to the president on the radio or for absolutely no reason at all Well good night, Alan.
Read more: http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=boy-meets-world&episode=s01e03
So, how come you're sitting outside in the dark? I was thinking about when I was a boy just a little younger than you are.
There was a war going on.
It's hard to picture you as a boy.
Did your parents call you Mr.
Feeny? I used to ask my mother why I could only have butter on my toast two mornings a week and she said, "Because of the war in Europe.
" And I wondered why there was never enough candy and she told me, "Because of the war in Europe.
" oh, and I longed for a pair of sneakers.
But I couldn't have any.
Those Europe guys stole 'em? No, no.
The rubber had to be diverted to the war effort.
There was a version of a sneaker available but it was made out of recycled tires and left black marks on the gym floor.
Hey, you took gym? They made me.
Anyway, I prayed every night for an end to the war in Europe.
Not from any altruistic desire for world peace.
Just a boy's selfish wish for buttered toast and sneakers.
Then I heard that Mr.
Truman was going on the radio that night to announce the end of the war.
And I went home and asked my father if I could stay up with him to hear the president.
Do you know what he said? I'm guessing it's either yes or no but we both know how well I do on multiple choice.
He said "Tomorrow's a school day.
"l don't want you up with me.
" So you're saying your dad really knew the value of education.
No, I'm saying my father didn't want me hanging around with him and his drinking buddies.
As a result, the next day at school I was rested and fresh and ready to learn.
I see your point, Mr.
Feeny.
No, I don't think you really do, Cory.
What do you suppose I learned in school that day? I know this has got to be a biggie Iike the Magna Carta or something.
I have no idea what you learned that day.
Neither do l.
You see, Mr.
Matthews education is not about obscure facts and little test scores.
Education is about the overall effect of years of slow absorption concepts, philosophies approaches to problem-solving.
The whole process is so grand and all-encompassing that it really can't be threatened by the occasional late-night no-hitter.
It is important that a boy spend time with his father.
Buthow do you know that? Your dad didn't let you stay up with him.
That's precisely Why I do know.
ALAN: Cory! over here, Dad having a drink with Mr.
Feeny.
It's just apple juice.
How's the store? oh, the store is fine.
Just a small grease fire at the rotisserie.
Tomorrow we'll run a special on blackened chicken.
-Alan.
-George.
Better come in, kiddo.
About time for bed.
Sure, Dad.
Umare we ever gonna study that European sneaker war? I think you'll get to it sometime in the course of your education.
Good, 'cause it sounded really interesting.
oh, it was.
Well, good night, Mr.
Feeny.
Good night, Mr.
Matthews.
Ahem.
I, uh just want you to know I'm gonna have him in bed every night when he's supposed to be.
Well, I want you to know that if I did have a son and the opportunity presented itself to wake him up to watch a baseball game or to listen to the president on the radio or for absolutely no reason at all Well good night, Alan.
Read more: http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=boy-meets-world&episode=s01e03 I was thinking about when I was a boy just a little younger than you are.
There was a war going on.
It's hard to picture you as a boy.
Did your parents call you Mr.
Feeny? I used to ask my mother why I could only have butter on my toast two mornings a week and she said, "Because of the war in Europe.
" And I wondered why there was never enough candy and she told me, "Because of the war in Europe.
" oh, and I longed for a pair of sneakers.
But I couldn't have any.
Those Europe guys stole 'em? No, no.
The rubber had to be diverted to the war effort.
There was a version of a sneaker available but it was made out of recycled tires and left black marks on the gym floor.
Hey, you took gym? They made me.
Anyway, I prayed every night for an end to the war in Europe.
Not from any altruistic desire for world peace.
Just a boy's selfish wish for buttered toast and sneakers.
Then I heard that Mr.
Truman was going on the radio that night to announce the end of the war.
And I went home and asked my father if I could stay up with him to hear the president.
Do you know what he said? I'm guessing it's either yes or no but we both know how well I do on multiple choice.
He said "Tomorrow's a school day.
"l don't want you up with me.
" So you're saying your dad really knew the value of education.
No, I'm saying my father didn't want me hanging around with him and his drinking buddies.
As a result, the next day at school I was rested and fresh and ready to learn.
I see your point, Mr.
Feeny.
No, I don't think you really do, Cory.
What do you suppose I learned in school that day? I know this has got to be a biggie Iike the Magna Carta or something.
I have no idea what you learned that day.
Neither do l.
You see, Mr.
Matthews education is not about obscure facts and little test scores.
Education is about the overall effect of years of slow absorption concepts, philosophies approaches to problem-solving.
The whole process is so grand and all-encompassing that it really can't be threatened by the occasional late-night no-hitter.
It is important that a boy spend time with his father.
Buthow do you know that? Your dad didn't let you stay up with him.
That's precisely Why I do know.
ALAN: Cory! over here, Dad having a drink with Mr.
Feeny.
It's just apple juice.
How's the store? oh, the store is fine.
Just a small grease fire at the rotisserie.
Tomorrow we'll run a special on blackened chicken.
-Alan.
-George.
Better come in, kiddo.
About time for bed.
Sure, Dad.
Umare we ever gonna study that European sneaker war? I think you'll get to it sometime in the course of your education.
Good, 'cause it sounded really interesting.
oh, it was.
Well, good night, Mr.
Feeny.
Good night, Mr.
Matthews.
Ahem.
I, uh just want you to know I'm gonna have him in bed every night when he's supposed to be.
Well, I want you to know that if I did have a son and the opportunity presented itself to wake him up to watch a baseball game or to listen to the president on the radio or for absolutely no reason at all Well good night, Alan.
Read more: http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=boy-meets-world&episode=s01e03
So, how come you're sitting outside in the dark? I was thinking about when I was a boy just a little younger than you are.
There was a war going on.
It's hard to picture you as a boy.
Did your parents call you Mr.
Feeny? I used to ask my mother why I could only have butter on my toast two mornings a week and she said, "Because of the war in Europe.
" And I wondered why there was never enough candy and she told me, "Because of the war in Europe.
" oh, and I longed for a pair of sneakers.
But I couldn't have any.
Those Europe guys stole 'em? No, no.
The rubber had to be diverted to the war effort.
There was a version of a sneaker available but it was made out of recycled tires and left black marks on the gym floor.
Hey, you took gym? They made me.
Anyway, I prayed every night for an end to the war in Europe.
Not from any altruistic desire for world peace.
Just a boy's selfish wish for buttered toast and sneakers.
Then I heard that Mr.
Truman was going on the radio that night to announce the end of the war.
And I went home and asked my father if I could stay up with him to hear the president.
Do you know what he said? I'm guessing it's either yes or no but we both know how well I do on multiple choice.
He said "Tomorrow's a school day.
"l don't want you up with me.
" So you're saying your dad really knew the value of education.
No, I'm saying my father didn't want me hanging around with him and his drinking buddies.
As a result, the next day at school I was rested and fresh and ready to learn.
I see your point, Mr.
Feeny.
No, I don't think you really do, Cory.
What do you suppose I learned in school that day? I know this has got to be a biggie Iike the Magna Carta or something.
I have no idea what you learned that day.
Neither do l.
You see, Mr.
Matthews education is not about obscure facts and little test scores.
Education is about the overall effect of years of slow absorption concepts, philosophies approaches to problem-solving.
The whole process is so grand and all-encompassing that it really can't be threatened by the occasional late-night no-hitter.
It is important that a boy spend time with his father.
Buthow do you know that? Your dad didn't let you stay up with him.
That's precisely Why I do know.
ALAN: Cory! over here, Dad having a drink with Mr.
Feeny.
It's just apple juice.
How's the store? oh, the store is fine.
Just a small grease fire at the rotisserie.
Tomorrow we'll run a special on blackened chicken.
-Alan.
-George.
Better come in, kiddo.
About time for bed.
Sure, Dad.
Umare we ever gonna study that European sneaker war? I think you'll get to it sometime in the course of your education.
Good, 'cause it sounded really interesting.
oh, it was.
Well, good night, Mr.
Feeny.
Good night, Mr.
Matthews.
Ahem.
I, uh just want you to know I'm gonna have him in bed every night when he's supposed to be.
Well, I want you to know that if I did have a son and the opportunity presented itself to wake him up to watch a baseball game or to listen to the president on the radio or for absolutely no reason at all Well good night, Alan.
Read more: http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=boy-meets-world&episode=s01e03
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