Lori

“Dykes, kikes, spics, micks, fags, drags, gooks, spooks . . . more of us are outsiders than aren’t; and that’s what the dear young ones too often fail to understand. They think they’ve learned it all by age fifteen. Perhaps they have. But they’re not the only ones who’ve learned it.”
― W.H. Pugmire, An Imp of Aether

“Not dying when everybody else did die is like dying harder than everybody else.”
― Blake Butler, Three Hundred Million

“Now, by all accounts, you have the perfect life: you have the high-earning husband, the rosy-cheeked children, and the Buick in the driveway. But something isn’t right. Household tasks don’t seem to hold your attention; you snarl at your children instead of blanketing them with smiles. You fret about how little you resemble those glossy women in the magazines, the ones who clean counters and bake cakes and radiate delight. (Looking at those ads, a housewife and freelance writer named Betty Friedan “thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t have an orgasm waxing the kitchen floor.”) Everything and everyone confirm that it’s just as you suspected: the problem is you. You’re oversexed, you’re undersexed, you’re overeducated, you’re unintelligent. You need to have your head shrunk; you need to take more sleeping pills. You ought to become a better cook—all those fancy new kitchen appliances!—and in the meantime be content and grateful with what you have. The cultural pressure of the 1950s was so intense that some women, in order to survive, killed off the parts of themselves that couldn’t conform.”
― Maggie Doherty, The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s

“When an acquaintance commiserated upon hearing of the loss of America’s capital, Franklin replied, “You mistake the matter. Instead of Howe taking Philadelphia, Philadelphia has taken Howe.”
― H.W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin