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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #nw
I was young at Myna, that first time. When had the change come? He had retreated to here, to Collegium, to spin his awkward webs of intrigue and to lecture at the College. Then, years on, the call had come for action. He had gone to that chest in which he stored his youth and found that, like some armour long unworn, it had rusted away. He tried to tell himself that this was not like the grumbling of any other man who finds the prime of his life behind him. I need my youth and strength now, as never before. A shame that one could no husband time until one needed it. All his thoughts rang hollow. He was past his best and that was the thorn that would not be plucked from his side. He was no different from any tradesman or scholar who, during a life of indolence, pauses partway up the stairs to think, This was not so hard, yesterday. ↗
She had an old friend from the vaudeville days named Buck Mack who lived with her. Buck had been part of a vaudeville team called Miller & Mack and had been an extra in Citizen Kane. In modern terms, he was a personal assistant: he ran the house, kept everything running smoothly, and watched over her. At first, Buck regarded me as an interloper, but it wasn't long before he saw that Barbara and I genuinely loved each other, and he and I became good friends. Because of the age difference, neither of us wanted to have our relationship in the papers, and with the help of Helen Ferguson, her publicist and one of her best friends, we kept it quiet. There were only a few people who knew about us. Nancy Sinatra Sr. was one of them, because she and Barbara were close friends. I didn't tell anybody at Fox about our affair, although Harry Brand might have known, if only because Harry knew everything. Likewise, I always assumed that Darryl Zanuck knew, although he never said a word about it to me. That might have been because Darryl and Barbara had something of a history, a bad one: Barbara told me that Darryl had chased her around his office years earlier, and I got the distinct impression that she hadn't appreciated the exercise. ↗
#age
After that, things happened very quickly. She gave me a key to her house, and I gave her a key to my apartment. If we were in town, we spent every weekend together. She cooked for me—she was good in the kitchen, but then she was good everywhere. We watched the Friday night fights on TV, and on Saturday or Sunday afternoons we'd go for long walks in the mountains above Malibu. Occasionally we would go to a movie, slipping in after the lights went down. Whenever we went out, Barbara [Stanwyck] would wear a scarf over her head, or a kind of hat, so it would be hard to tell who she was. For the next four years, we became part of each other's lives. In a very real way, I think we still are. Barbara proved to be one of the most marvelous relationships of my life. I was twenty-two, she was forty-five, but our ages were beside the point. She was everything to me—a beautiful woman with a great sense of humor and enormous accomplishments to her name. ↗
#age
I was in love with her. She was very loving, very caring, very involved with me, and highly sexed. Making love with her was an entirely different thing than I had ever experienced. I had been with girls, and I had been with women, but I had never been with a woman with her level of knowledge, her level of taste. I was so incredibly taken with her, taken by her. We were both at turning points in our lives. She had been married to Robert Taylor for over ten years when he went to Italy to make Quo Vadis and had an affair, at which point Barbara [Stanwyck] threw him out. She was bitter about Taylor; she acted very quickly, almost reflexively, although I don't know that she thought it was too quick. I don't know precisely what went on between them; we never got into it. In fact, I went hunting with Bob Taylor a few times, and I think he might have known about us. At any rate, she had just gotten her divorce when we met. She was at a very vulnerable moment in her life and career. The forties are a dangerous time for any woman, and especially so for an actress whose work is her identity—definitely Barbara's way of life. The transition to playing middle-aged women has unnerved a lot of actresses—some of Barbara's contemporaries, such as Norma Shearer and Kay Francis, quit the business rather than confront it—but she faced it straight on because that's the kind of woman she was. The continuity of her career was more important to her than any individual part. Like so many people in show business, she was a prisoner of her career. Because of my youth, I suppose in one sense I was a validation of her sexuality. ↗
#age
In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy. In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less and less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, and shares. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced or placeless citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers... Thus, although we are not slaves in name, and cannot be carried to market and sold as somebody else's legal chattels, we are free only within narrow limits. For all our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices that we are free to make. What would be the point, for example, if a majority of our people decided to be self-employed? The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means. ↗
Barbara [Stanwyck] and I were together for four years. What ultimately broke it up was the fact that it couldn't go anywhere—it was a classic backstreet romance. I was going on location to make movies, she was going on location to make movies, and there was no chance of a marriage in that place and time, so it was bound to run out of steam. She finally sat me down and told me that it was too difficult for her. She loved me, but. . . . I couldn't argue with her reasoning. There was simply no way we could have been married at that time. I would have always been Mr. Stanwyck, and we both knew it. And that's how it came to an end. She was an enormous influence in my life, and still is. I remain immensely grateful. I gave her things, nice things, such as a four-leaf clover necklace made out of platinum and diamonds, a piece of jewelry she always set special store by. But the things I gave her were dwarfed by the things she gave me. If I had to limit it to just one thing, I would say she gave me self-esteem. To have a woman of her beauty and accomplishment see value in me and give herself totally to me couldn't help but have a powerful impact on my psyche. Barbara was the first savior in my life. More concretely, she gave me values I never had before. I've mentioned that she gave me a love of reading, but she also taught me to appreciate art. I still have two landscapes she gave me, one of San Francisco, the other of Paris. Without her, there's no doubt in my mind I would have gone in a different direction, and not a better one. For one thing, I would have spent more time with my contemporaries, and frankly, none of my contemporaries were in Barbara's league. I always kept in touch with Barbara. I don't know who the men in her life were, although I'm sure they existed. I know she had escorts, although I assumed most of them were gay. ↗
#art
For this reason the gentleman will employ a man on a distant mission and observe his degree of loyalty, will employ him close at hand and observe his degree of respect. He will hand him troublesome affairs and observe how well he manages them, will suddenly ask his advice and observe how wisely he answers. He will exact some difficult promise from him and see how well he keeps it, turn over funds to him and see with what benevolence he dispenses them, inform him of the danger he is in and note how faithful he is to his duties. He will get him drunk with wine and observe how well he handles himself, place him in mixed company and see what effect beauty has upon him. By applying these nine tests, you may determine who is the unworthy man. ↗
The autopilot is a hands-free piece of electronic wizardry. It's not some brutal application of electricity like one of the Pubyok's car batteries...Think of its probing as a conversation with the mind, imagine it in a dance with identity. Yes, picture a pencil and eraser engaged in a beautiful dance across the page. The pencil's tip bursts with expression - squiggles, figures, words - filling the page, as the eraser measures, takes note, follows in the pencil's footsteps, leaving only blankness in its wake. The pencil's next seizure of scribbles is perhaps more intense and desperate, but shorter lived, and the eraser follows again. They continue in lockstep this way, the self and the state, coming closer to one another until finally the pencil and the eraser are almost one, moving in sympathy, the line disappearing even as it's laid down, the words unwritten before the letters are formed, and finally there is only white. ↗
Because I was so involved with Barbara [Stanwyck], I was off-limits for other women, which was something of a problem for the studio. They wanted to promote the image of a carefree young stud—never my style—so I had publicity dates with young actresses around town like Lori Nelson or Debra Paget. This was a relic of the days when the studio system was in its prime. The studio would arrange for two young stars-in-waiting to go out to dinner and a dance and assign a photographer to accompany them. The result would be placed in a fan magazine. It was a totally artificial story documenting a nonexistent relationship, but it served to keep the names of young talents in front of the public. As far as I was concerned, it was part of the job, and usually pleasant enough. When reporters would ask me about my romantic life, which they did incessantly, I had to say things like, "If I go out with one woman a few times, it's considered a romance. If I date a lot of girls, I'm a Casanova. It's one of those 'heads-you-win-tails-I-lose' deals. I don't think it's anybody's business what I do." The last sentence contained my true feelings. ↗
