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Quote by Maureen F. McHugh

“I have all this empty time in front of me. Tonight and tomorrow and the week after and the next month and all down through the years as I never marry and become a dried-up woman. Evenings spent folding paper. Days cleaning someone else's house. Free afternoons spent shopping a bit, stopping in tea shops because my feet hurt. That is what lives are, aren't they? Attempts to fill our time with activity designed to prevent us from realizing that there is no meaning?”

Quote by Maureen F. McHugh

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Maureen F. McHugh
Maureen F. McHugh

Maureen F. McHugh is an American science fiction writer known for her unique narrative style and profound insights into the future. Her works often explore the impact of technological progress, social changes, and the essence of human existence. more

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“That kind of thinking [that writers must alleviate their guilt for leading a creative life] is based on the idea that the creative life is somehow self-indulgent. Artists and writers have to understand and live the truth that what we are doing is nourishing the world. William Carlos Williams said, "It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." You can't eat a book, right, but books have saved my life more often than sandwiches. And they've saved your life... But we don't say, oh, Maya Angelou should have silenced herself because other people have other destinies. It's interesting, because artists are always encouraged to feel guilty about their work. Why? Why don't we ask predatory bankers how they alleviate their guilt?”

“Where did this wolf-tribe appear from among our people? Does it really stem from our own roots? Our own blood? It is our own. And just so we don't go around flaunting too proudly the white mantle of the just, let everyone ask himself: "If my life had turned out differently, might I myself not have become just such an executioner?" It is a dreadful question if one really answers it honestly.”

“Russians love a good plot--camarillas, Masons, whatever--where in fact there is usually just plain sloppiness. Someone mistrusted someone else; someone failed to warn someone else. So someone decided to take out more insurance, called up the troops and removed the tsar from Petersburg. Great and terrible events in Russia are usually due to someone's stupidity or laziness.”

“July is a bad month for revolutionaries. In France, Robespierre was executed in July; in Russia, five eminent Decembrists, who had revolted against Nicholas I, were hanged in July. And now in July the hour of vengeance had come. Vengeance against the son and grandson of the man who had once killed Lenin's brother. The revolutionaries' age-old hunt for Russian tsars was drawing to a close.”

“On the ninth anniversary celebration of the Moncada Barracks Attack, Castro gave a speech in Santiago stating that the only thing Cuba had to fear was a direct attack by the United States. At the same time, the Russians were off-loading men and equipment from ships at the small, hardly-noticed port of Mariel. They transported their equipment, mostly at night, into a thickly wooded area in the mountains near San Cristóbal, which was 26 miles away from the port and approximately 50 miles from Havana. The CIA received a report that a twenty-six foot missile had been seen being transported on Cuban Highway A 1. This was twice the size of a SAM missile and the CIA deemed it highly unlikely that the Soviet Union would send offensive weapons of this size to Cuba. However, with the cold war in high gear, Khrushchev thought that he could change the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union by placing missiles on Cuban soil. This operation was conducted in strict secrecy, with Castro reluctantly agreeing to it. Castro still felt that Cuba’s alliance with the Soviet’s was risky and that this was a negative compromise undermining Cuban autonomy. Their secret however became confirmed by an Air Force U 2 surveillance aircraft, sent on a reconnaissance mission, dispatched over the western part of the island. The United States and the Soviet Union agreed on a deal. In return for pulling the Russian missiles out of Cuba the U.S. agreed to pull its missiles out of Turkey.”

“Lucitta knew Russian politics, and discussed how Trotsky was compelled by Stalin’s régime to deny many of his beliefs. It seemed that Mella, believing in one’s own personal independence, developed an interest in Trotsky’s philosophy. Basically, Trotsky believed that an international revolution should be initiated by the people, and that Communism wouldn’t succeed if it were only in one country surrounded by capitalistic states. Stalin countered that Marxism should be concentrated and strengthened under strong leadership in one country, which was the case in Russia. It didn’t help Trotsky’s cause within the Communist Party, when he contended that Stalinism in reality was “Tyranny disguised as Communism.”

“Russia, after all, has existed for a thousand years; the Soviet era lasted only seventy-four. The Romanov dynasty, which included such towering figures as Peter and Catherine the Great, had ruled for more than three centuries. It came to an end in brutal murders in a Siberian cellar, but many Russians never knew this had happened. Or how. Or why.”