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Quote by Malba Tahan

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The Man Who Counted: A Collection of Mathematical Adventures

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Malba Tahan

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“Our Skirt (by Kathy Boudin) You were forty-five and I was fourteen when you gave me the skirt. ¨It's from Paris!¨ you said as if that would impress me who at best had mixed feelings about skirts. But I was drawn by that summer cotton with splashes of black and white--like paint dabbed by an eager artist. I borrowed your skirt and it moved like waves as I danced at a ninth grade party. Wearing it date after date including my first dinner with a college man. I never was much for buying new clothes, once I liked something it stayed with me for years. I remember the day I tried ironing your skirt, so wide it seemed to go on and on like a western sky. Then I smelled the burning and, crushed, saw that I had left a red-brown scorch on that painting. But you, Mother, you understood because ironing was not your thing either. And over the years your skirt became my skirt until I left it and other parts of home with you. Now you are eighty and I almost fifty. We sit across from each other in the prison visiting room. Your soft gray-thin hair twirls into style. I follow the lines on your face, paths lit by your eyes until my gaze comes to rest on the black and white on the years that our skirt has endured.”

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“I thought you were all living my dream," I said to the gowns, although in actuality I was speaking to the distant women they represented. "But you must have all been frightened and lonely and uncomfortable, just like me. And yet, you endured. You conquered the enchantments that threatened your lives and your kingdoms. And I will endure as well. No matter how many years I'm trapped here, I will one day shatter my enchantment and find my happy ending.”

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