Dan

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Not inferior. Different! Different! Imagine! To compare me to Hitler. Not that I haven’t heard it in that campaign. I heard everything. But to hear it from you. Essie Mae…You can’t change the South.”

“You don’t want to, sir.”

“Oh yes I do. I’m changing it right now, by having you here, getting a fine education, to get you a fine career. There’s nothing in this country you won’t be able to do, Essie Mae. Nothing at all. Nothing your husband won’t be able to do.”

“We can’t get served at the counter at Woolworth’s.”

“Why would you want to? The food’s no good. I bet these restaurants right over here are much better. They serve good fresh food. I know they do. You can’t get a vegetable at Woolworth’s. I’ve never seen spinach, green beans at the five and dime. What do you want, a hot dog that will kill you?”

“I guess I want the choice, Governor.”
― Essie Mae Washington-Williams, Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond

“Good Lord!" he said, almost aloud, "in one whole year what have I done? I haven't made one single friend, known what one real man was doing or thinking, done anything I wanted to do, talked out what I wanted to talk, read what I wanted to read, or had time to make the friends I wanted to make. I've been nothing but material— varsity material— society material; I've lost all the imagination I had, and know less than when I came; and I'm the popular man—' the big man'— in the class! Great! Is it my fault or the fault of things up here?”
― Owen Johnson, Stover at Yale

“I disagree. When you die, your opinion of yourself dies with you. What matters is if you’ll be missed.”
― J.A. Konrath, Everybody Dies