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I Quotes

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All I Quotes

“It used to be said that, socially speaking, Philadelphia asked who a person is, New York how much is he worth, and Boston what does he know. Nationally it has now become generally recognized that Boston Society has long cared even more than Philadelphia about the first point and has refined the asking of who a person is to the point of demanding to know who he was. Philadelphia asks about a man's parents; Boston wants to know about his grandparents.”

“It used to be said, not so long ago, that every suicide gave Satan special pleasure. I don't think that's true-unless it isn't true either that the Devil is a gentleman. If the Devil has no class at all, then okay, I agree: He gets a bang out of suicide. Because suicide is a mess. As a subject for study, suicide is perhaps uniquely incoherent. And the act itself is without shape and without form. The human project implodes, contorts inward-shameful, infantile, writhing, gesturing. It's a mess in there.”

“It used to be that I would look for the deeper meaning in everything, thinking that I was some kind of hermeneutic sleuth moving through the world, but I stopped that when I was twelve. Though I would have been unable to articulate it then, I have since come to recognize that I was abandoning any search for elucidation of what might be called subjective or thematic meaning schemes and replacing it with a mere delineation of specific case descriptions, from which I, at least, could make inferences, however unconscious, that would allow me to understand the world as it affected me. In other words, I learned to take the world as it came. In other words still, I just didn’t care.”

“It used to be that if your automobile broke, the teenager down the street with the wrench could fix it. Now you have to have sophisticated equipment that can deal with microchips. We're entering a world in which the complexity of the devices and the system of interconnecting devices is beyond our capability to easily understand.”

“It used to be that only a professional player could wear the official team uniform. Now anyone with $75 can own an authentic game jersey. Somehow that cheapens the honor and privilege that go with that jersey. In reality, only the players themselves have earned the right to wear it. But we have done the same thing with our heroes. We throw the term around and slap it on just about anyone who has attained even a modicum of celebrity status, whether it is in the world of sports, music, or entertainment. But greatness is not merely for those fortunate enough to gain public notoriety. It is not for those who seek grandeur or personal glory. Rather it should be for those who, through quiet strength, demonstrate character on and off the field or the stage.”

“It used to be that the working class, broadly speaking - Americans who worked with their hands, who worked in factories, who were not in management - were an interest group, a political interest group. And their main spokespersons were the Democrats. Their platform was the Democratic Party. And that began to change after the 1960s. Not for black or other working class Americans, but for white working class.”

“It used to be that wealthy people were the leisure class, and having time off was a status symbol. That's switched now: being busy and overworked is the reality for many white-collar workers, and there's a kind of perverse currency to that, competitive busy-ness. At the other end of the income scale, there's a swath of lower-wage workers who are underemployed or unemployed, with too much unwanted leisure, and zero status for that. For shift workers, devices mean they're accessible in ways they weren't before, susceptible to that call from the boss to log more hours.”

“It used to be that when I made mistakes like this or came close to losing my life, I would just call Miguel. He'd drop it all to come to me—his movies, media engagements no matter how big they were, and even his criminal activities went on hold for me. It made me think he cared. Miguel canceled an appearance on the Dave Letterman show just because he called me and thought my voice sounded like something was wrong. He directed his gaze to the bruises decorating my face. “You said you weren't hurt.” With those big arms, he picked me up and slammed the door behind us. “When I ask you if you're okay, you tell me the truth.”