#ham

Offered a job as book critic for Time magazine as a young man, Bellow had been interviewed by Chambers and asked to give his opinion about William Wordsworth. Replying perhaps too quickly that Wordsworth had been a Romantic poet, he had been brusquely informed by Chambers that there was no place for him at the magazine. Bellow had often wondered, he told us, what he ought to have said. I suggested that he might have got the job if he'd replied that Wordsworth was a once-revolutionary poet who later became a conservative and was denounced by Browning and others as a turncoat. This seemed to Bellow to be probably right. More interesting was the related question: What if he'd kept that job? ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#robert-browning #romantic-poetry #saul-bellow #time-magazine #whittaker-chambers

There was murder, there was rape, there were unspeakable practices, and all of them were for the good, the bloody good, the bloody myth, for the grail, for the Tower. ↗

— Stephen King

#chambers #dark #deschain #grail #gunslinger

Help me, Mikey, she wanted to say. I’m afraid. More afraid than you’d ever believe.’ And he’d take her hand and they’d fly across the rooftops and up into space and sit on some planet and watch a double sunrise or maybe a star being born or some other event that no human had ever seen, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her. And she’d tell him everything. ↗

— Jenny Downham

#jenny-downham #made-me-cry #romance #you-against-me #young-adult

When psychologists Catherine Caldwell-Harris and Ayse Ayçiçegi compared U.S. and Turkish samples, they found that having "an orientation inconsistent with societal values" is a risk factor for poor mental health. The findings support what the researchers call the personality-culture clash hypothesis: "Psychological adjustment depends on the degree of match between personality and the values of surrounding society." To the extent that introverts feel the need to explain, apologize, or feel guilty about what works best for them, they feel alienated not only from society but from themselves. ↗

— Laurie Helgoe

#depression #guilt #introversion #psychology #shame

Sometimes the greatest wounds are the ones we try the hardest not to inflict. ↗

— Laurell K. Hamilton

#anita-blake

The real shame about the ending of the Guns N' Roses when I got kicked out wasn't just that I got kicked out, but Slash and Axl stopped working together. ↗

— Steven Adler

#ending #got #guns #i #just

In 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, a bill opening one half million square miles of territory in the western United States for settlement. ↗

— Peter Agre

#abraham lincoln #act #bill #half #homestead

But let us not too hastily triumph in the shame of Sparta, lest we aggravate our own condemnation. ↗

— Thomas Day

#condemnation #hastily #lest #let us #our

Although it's only the beginning of the championship, I am very surprised at my capability. ↗

— Jean Alesi

#am #beginning #capability #championship #i

I figure I'll be champ for about ten years and then I'll let my brother take over - like the Kennedys down in Washington. ↗

— Muhammad Ali

#brother #champ #down #figure #i