Ben Weinstein > Recent Status Updates

201: "'People on Long Island are afraid to go to bed for fear that when they wake up in the morning they would find their property seized by Robert Moses,' [a] Republican senator shouted. Jumping out of his seat, a Democrat replied: 'Is it not true that if they don't go to bed on Long Island it is because the bedsheets may be in use elsewhere?'"

There's a great Jimmy Walker quote as well, but not fit for goodreads.

done with Part III. Moses turns toward parks and away from reform; historo-politico-geographic survey of Long Island; Caro's disdain for robber barons.

p 148: "Their creed was summed up in two quotes: Commodore Vanderbilt's 'Law? What do I care for law? Hain't I got the power?' and J. P. Morgan's 'I owe the public nothing.'" (from a great paragraph I wish I could quote in its entirety—400 characters is too short!)

117: 'Men who saw in the bond between Robert Moses and Alfred Emanuel Smith a key to the shape in which the future of New York State and New York City unfolded... would wonder what had forged between the two men of independence and pride and ambition a tie so strong that, transcending independence and pride and ambition, it would be ended only by death.'

Ch 7 is such a great bio/hagiography of Al Smith

p 41: 'In literature his greatest enthusiasm was for Samuel Johnson. ... The assigned reading included excerpts from Boswell's biography of Johnson; Moses read the book complete'

A man after my own heart.

346: "In advance of the Jewish high holidays in 1943, [Department of Markets] workers created an exhibition in the Essex Street municipal market to demonstrate to Lower East Side housewives how less expensive saltwater fish could be used in place of the usual freshwater yellow pike and carp to prepare gefilte fish."

244: "Roosevelt and La Guardia did possess outstanding personal qualities. But this does not fully account for how they came to loom so large in the public life of the nation and the city. ...Roosevelt and La Guardia acquired charisma because events rendered them capable of accomplishing governmental feats that seemed beyond the ability of ordinary mortals."

201: "Roosevelt had initially conceived [of the Federal One projects] simply as a way to create jobs for a set of particularly hard-hit occupational groups: artists 'have to live,' he remarked; 'I guess the only thing they can do is paint and surely there must be some public place where paintings are wanted.'"

125: "Too often life in New York is merely a squalid succession of days," [La Guardia] said in one campaign speech, "whereas in fact it can be a great, living, thrilling adventure."

Didn't know this was what Eric Adams was riffing on when he said this: https://youtu.be/wSq9SJzSRUA?si=vVatz...

176: One newspaper endorsed McKinley with an editorial headlined THE NATION'S CHOICE–OF EVILS. Benjamin Harrison, the most recent Republican president, refused to endorse McKinley, leading newspapers to note his "masterly inactivity" and "brilliant flashes of silence." Grover Cleveland went duck hunting rather than vote, muttering before he set out, "Bryanism and McKinleyism! What a choice for a patriotic American!"

p 36: 'Cynics growled that [Senator Redfield] Proctor, who owned quarries in Vermont, was encouraging American intervention in Cuba to increase the market for gravestones.'

"...there was no Nazi coup d'etat. Instead, there was a series of quasi-legal actions ... no one of which by itself constituted a revolution, but the sum of which transformed Germany from a republic to a dictatorship. The problem was where to draw the line. But by the time the line could be clearly drawn, the revolution was a fait accompli, ... and organized resistance was no longer possible." 191

'At that instant she attained for me an almost preternatural grandeur, moved into a different century, the epoch of a long-gone heroical nobility. Because to conceal and to deny frailty can only be heroic.' (134-5)

'"...as far as Austria-Hungary is concerned, the ostensibly peculiar is perfectly natural. It's only in this crazy Europe of nation-states and nationalists that the natural looks peculiar. ... You won't find Austria in the Alps – chamois, yes, and edelweiss and gentians but barely a hint of the double-headed eagle. The substance of Austria is drawn and replenished from the Crown Lands."' (16)

'the most moving sight there, two young people in love dancing together, blind to each other's defects, deaf to the warnings of fate, deluding themselves, ... Don Fabrizio felt his heart thaw; his disgust gave way to compassion for all these ephemeral beings out to enjoy the tiny ray of light granted them between two shades, before the cradle, after the last spasms.' (172)

Between Two Shades – good name for a novel

'If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.' (19)

'Their wanderings through the seemingly limitless building were interminable... The two lovers embarked for Cythera on a ship made of dark and sunny rooms, of apartments sumptuous or squalid, empty or crammed with remains of heterogenous furniture.' (118)

Curious how the film handles the paintings that make up so much of the novel's imagery.