Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Gregory Maquire

Quote by Gregory Maquire

“But she remembered this as a joke, fondly. Woe is the natural end of life, yet we go on having babies. No, said Nanny, an echo in Melena's mind (and editorializing as usual): No, no, you pretty little pampered hussy. We don't go on having babies, that's quite apparent. We only have babies when we're young enough not to know how grim life turns out. Once we really get the full measure of it we're slow learners, we women-we dry up in disgust and sensibly halt production. But men don't dry up, Melena objected; they can father to the death. Ah, we're slow learners, Nanny countered. But they can't learn at all.”

Quote by Gregory Maquire

Create image

Author

Gregory Maquire

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Gregory Maquire. more

You May Also Like

“He says he wants to go back to Germany,' Nyasha confides. 'As soon as he's finished his doctorate,' she goes on, as though both completion of his research and departure are imminent. You realize she does not know Cousin-Brother-in-Law is mulling another thesis because he is no longer interested in his subject. You are surprised your in-law is behaving in the way you expect your own black men to do, first of all by being so indecisive and then by not telling his wife.”

MenMarriageCouples
Book:This Mournable Body
Create image

“In old prints melancholy is usually portrayed as a woman, disheveled, deranged, surrounded by broken pitchers, leaning casks, torn books. She may be sunk in unpeaceful sleep, heavy limbed, overpowered by her inability to take the world's measure, her compass and book laid aside. She is very frightening, but the person she frightens most is herself. She is her own disease. Miter shows her wearing a large ungainly dress, winged, a garland in her tangled hair. She has a fierce frown and so great is her disarray that she is closed in by emblems of study, duty, and suffering: a bell, an hourglass, a pair of scales, a globe, a compass, a ladder, nails. Sometimes this woman is shown surrounded by encroaching weeds, a conweb undisturbed above her head. Sometimes she gazes out of the window at a full moon for she is moonstruck. And should melancholy strike a man it will because he is suffering from romantic love: he will lean his padded satin arm on a velvet cushion and gaze skywards under the nodding plume of his hat, or he will grasp a thorn or a nettle and indicate that he does not sleep. These men seem to me to be striking a bit of a pose, unlike women, whose melancholy is less picturesque. The women look as if they are in the grip of an affliction too serious to be put into words. The men, on the other hand, appear to have dressed up for the occasion, and are anxious to put a noble face on their suffering. Which shows that nothing much has changed since the sixteenth century at least in that respect.”

MenArtWomenHistoryMelancholy
Book:Look at Me
Create image

“Personally, I mistrust all handsome men. The superficial pleasures of this life come too easily to them, and they seem to walk the world as though they themselves were personally responsible for their own good looks. I don't mind a woman being pretty. That's different. But in a man, I'm sorry, but somehow or other I find it downright offensive.”

MenWomenConfidenceGenderAttractivenessHandsomenessGood Looks
Book:Skin and Other Stories
Create image