“I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.”
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Story of My Life
"In the late eighties, New York has achieved an almost anarchic state of frenzy. Stockbrokers talk like artists, artists talk like stockbrokers, and everyone acts like there's no tomorrow. Alison, well, she's lucky if she can make it to her acting class. Each night is a new adventure, not infrequently catastrophic, from restaurants to clubs in a whirl of old boyfriends and new dilemmas. Several months ahead of Vogue and several checks behind in rent, Alison and her friends run on cocaine and their fathers' credit cards, and suffer various fixations--the perfect Chanel suit, blasé lust, familiarity with the rich and infamous--that make life less a party than an ordeal. In fact, her friends are developing habits that even Alison finds alarming; and when her sister blows into town, emotional bankruptcy isn't likely to be far behind"--From publisher description.
Quotes
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Jay McInerney
Canonical work source
“There is no such thing as a perfectly happy or perfectly unhappy man in the world. One has more happiness in his life and another more unhappiness, and the same circumstance may produce wide...”
“I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many...”
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“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or...”
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“Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do...”
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“For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back...”
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“Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish t...”
“The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spiri...”
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“It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennu...”
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“For one wild, glad moment we snapped the chain that binds us to earth, and joining hands with the winds we felt ourselves divine.”
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“Some false representations contravene the law; some do not. ... The sensibilities of no two men are the same. Some would refuse to sell property without carefully explaining all about its me...”