“Can you, for a moment, imagine how depressing it is to teach five centuries of masculine ineptitude? History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.”
Category: Quotes
Quotes from The Spell – Alan Hollinghurst
“Alex was very quiet, and Danny wondered if he knew what was coming. He probably did, he was very sensitive; and he’d been through this kind of thing before. Danny looked casually at Justin, whom he found alien in many ways, and saw that they were about to share the shabby distinction of having thrown Alex over. He knew from his break-up with George what the pain might be like. And he noticed that having been through it himself he felt some how authorised, and even empowered, to inflict it on someone else. It was the hard currency of human business. Slightly giddy from his own philosophy, he reached up to take his second cold drink.” – 231
“This second failure was a shocking reinforcement of the first. And yet he had to admit that there was something ambiguously easier about it too: he already knew the lesson, he knew the bereft amazement of finding that you had unwittingly had your last fuck, your last passionate kiss, your last taxi-ride hand-in-hand in the gloom; and he knew too that on both occasions there had been signals, like the seen but noiseless drum-strokes of a tympanist checking his tuning.” – 231
Quote from Blood Done Sign My Name – Timothy Tyson
“When I was only three years old, Mama found me on the floor with a book pulled tightly against my face, sobbing hard. When she asked me why on earth I was crying, I told her, ‘Because I can’t get in the book.’ Now, I could not read at that age. What had happened, really, is that my mother had read so many books to me, so vividly, so beautifully, that I expected to be able to pick up the book and plunge instantly into beautiful depths of the imagination, and was disappointed I could not. In later years, of course, I found exactly that kind of satisfaction in books, and I owe all that to Mama.” – 355
Quote from Homocons: Rise of the Gay Right – Richard Goldstein
“That’s why same-sex marriage seems so important for many gay activists at this point in our history. It stands for civic striving, which is not the same as social climbing. This is a crucial distinction, one that requires progressives to support the right to do what they may not think is right. If a single principle sums up our movement, it’s that we ought to have the same option as straights. Critics of marriage can work for the day when people reject this institution, but they must also struggle for a time when people make that choice because they are free to, not because they must.” – 106
“While it is a mistake to conflate pop culture with social reality, it certainly can wean people from their fear and loathing of the other, especially when its tropes amplify the values of liberal society. Among these principles is the conviction that identity is not destiny. Though this ideal is often honored in the breach, its application to women and gays fuels the engine of fundamentalism, which is not just a religious orientation but a belief in the fixed nature of sexual and ultimately social hierarchies. By challenging this order, gay liberation is central to the culture wars and no doubt the coming battle over same-sex marriage will be a culminating event in that conflict.” – 113
Quote from the Ballad of the Sad Cafe – Carson McCullers
“But what sort of thing is love? First of all, it is a joint experience between two persons, but that fact does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only the stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness.
Now, the beloved can also be of any description: the most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else–but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. Therefore, the quality and value of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.
But though the outward facts of love are often sad and ridiculous, it must be remembered that no one can know what really takes place in the soul of the lover himself. So, who but God can be the final judge of any love? But one thing can be said about these three people–all of whom, Miss Amelia, Cousin Lymon and Marvin Macy, all of whom were subject to the condition of love. The thing that can be said is this: No good will come of it.”