#pare

The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. ↗

— John Updike

#children #decided #education #equipped #fathers

Sympathy is something that shouldn't be bestowed upon the Yankees. Apparently it angers them. ↗

— Bob Feller

#bestowed #something #sympathy #them #upon

An office boy in London was the lowest of the low. The office boy was the tea boy. He would be the dog's body: It means someone who would do anything at all. I was quite prepared for that and enjoyed it. ↗

— George Carey

#body #boy #dog #enjoyed #i

They visited him in saris, clumping gracelessly through red mud and long grass ... and introduced themselves as Mrs. Pillai, Mrs. Eapen and Mrs. Rajagopalan. Velutha introduced himself and his paralyzed brother Kuttappen (although he was fast asleep). He greeted them with the utmost courtesy. He addressed them all as Kochamma [an honorific title for a woman] and gave them fresh coconut water to drink. He chatted to them about the weather. The river. The fact that in his opinion coconut trees were getting shorter by the year. As were the ladies in Ayemenem. He introduced them to his surly hen. He showed them his carpentry tools, and whittled them each a little wooden spoon. It is only now, these years later, that Rahel with adult hindsight recognized the sweetness of that gesture. A grown man entertaining three raccoons, treating them like real ladies. Instinctively colluding in the conspiracy of their fiction, taking care not to decimate it with adult carelessness. Or affection. [emphasis mine] It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do. ↗

— Arundhati Roy

#imagination #love #make-believe #parenting #dreams

I have met a couple of six-year-olds who were apparently quite excited to meet me - before they actually met me. And when they actually met me they ran behind their parents' legs and cowered for shelter. ↗

— Tom Felton

#apparently #before #behind #couple #excited

When he was twenty-three or twenty-four my father began to learn German and read philosophy in his spare hours, which did not look as though he were destined to remain long on board ship! ↗

— Edward Carpenter

#board #destined #did #father #german

When I was 9 or 10 years old it wasn't the thing to be seen doing - reading a book in your spare time. ↗

— Tom Felton

#doing #i #old #reading #seen

In the second installment, I pretty much dominate the show. Somehow or another, though, I manage to apparently dominate the first show pretty well with just my voice and my hands and a shot of my boots kicking cartridges out of the way. ↗

— David Carradine

#apparently #boots #cartridges #dominate #first

My sister and I were born in San Francisco. When our parents died, we came down here to live with relatives. ↗

— Freddy Fender

#came #died #down #francisco #here

I taught principally German language and literature at Eton. But any master with private pupils must be prepared to teach anything they ask for. That can be as diverse as the early paintings of Salvador Dali or how bumblebees manage to fly. ↗

— John le Carre

#anything #ask #be prepared #dali #diverse