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“There are jokes about breast surgeons.
You know-- something like-- I've seen more breasts in this city than--
I don't know the punch line.
There must be a punch line.
I'm not a man who falls in love easily. I've been faithful to my
wife. We fell in love when we were twenty-two. We had plans. There
was justice in the world. There was justice in love. If a person was
good enough, an equally good person would fall in love with that
person. And then I met-- Ana. Justice had nothing to do with it.
There once was a very great American surgeon named Halsted. He was
married to a nurse. He loved her-- immeasurably. One day Halsted
noticed that his wife's hands were chapped and red when she came back
from surgery. And so he invented rubber gloves. For her. It is
one of the great love stories in medicine. The difference between
inspired medicine and uninspired medicine is love.
When I met Ana, I knew:
I loved her to the point of invention.”
― The Clean House and Other Plays
You know-- something like-- I've seen more breasts in this city than--
I don't know the punch line.
There must be a punch line.
I'm not a man who falls in love easily. I've been faithful to my
wife. We fell in love when we were twenty-two. We had plans. There
was justice in the world. There was justice in love. If a person was
good enough, an equally good person would fall in love with that
person. And then I met-- Ana. Justice had nothing to do with it.
There once was a very great American surgeon named Halsted. He was
married to a nurse. He loved her-- immeasurably. One day Halsted
noticed that his wife's hands were chapped and red when she came back
from surgery. And so he invented rubber gloves. For her. It is
one of the great love stories in medicine. The difference between
inspired medicine and uninspired medicine is love.
When I met Ana, I knew:
I loved her to the point of invention.”
― The Clean House and Other Plays
“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”
― The Robber Bride
― The Robber Bride
“It is two A.M., and you are tired. You miss the love of your life. You want to go home. You would rather be with her, in bed, hearing the light buzz of her snoring, watching her sleep, than be here.
[...]
You imagine a world where the two of you can go out to dinner together on a Saturday night and no one thinks twice about it. It makes you want to cry, the simplicity of it, the smallness of it. You have worked so hard for a life so grand. And now all you want are the smallest freedoms. The daily peace of loving plainly.”
― The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
[...]
You imagine a world where the two of you can go out to dinner together on a Saturday night and no one thinks twice about it. It makes you want to cry, the simplicity of it, the smallness of it. You have worked so hard for a life so grand. And now all you want are the smallest freedoms. The daily peace of loving plainly.”
― The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
“we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.”
― A Moveable Feast
― A Moveable Feast
“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”
― The Secret History
― The Secret History
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