To be a temp, in other words, is to be an interim human being. It means having almost no rights and begging for scraps to survive. It means hearing, from comfortable superiors, that the world is reasonable and fair, that all you have to do to earn your grace is work hard, always work hard.
If he accomplished nothing else in his outlandish lifetime, Limbaugh revealed the bankruptcy, hypocrisy, and outright cruelty burning in the heart of every right-wing moralist.
Given how comprehensively Twitter has re-wired our fundamental consciousness, it has seemed difficult to believe that no one has yet produced a book equal in expressiveness to its peculiar and otherworldly psychological glow.
This is the greatest opening line in imaginative literature, because it’s the first one ever written. How can the invention of fiction itself be topped?
This is what happens to Tolstoy’s female types. His bias of women wears the garment of universal truth: either they are attractive, childless, and morally suspicious charmers, or plain, dumb, dedicated mothers.
You and I might also, and just as profitably, take in the crucial life lesson: If you’re going to have a nervous breakdown, make it a spectacular one, complete with gawking audience and baffled fans. Go big or go home.
It is a blueprint for a way forward to build better writing programs, and thus a new kind of writer and teacher who can imagine beyond a structure that often hurt them and left them in need of repair.
The terrible logic of America is that our deepest nightmares and desires always have a way of enacting themselves, of moving from celluloid to reality.
Stone's work reads as if it were composed to the tune of clanging blacksmiths and left to cool under the stars somewhere far from land. This is the conundrum of good writing. It can take you anywhere.
A quick survey suggests my experience is rather typical, how this hostile atmosphere begins when girls are still children, continues with everyday misogyny, and proceeds when the weaponized penis enters the workplace.
The song strikes me as a description of how we get through life: we let the days go by, riding on the backs of accumulated habits. Sometimes we wonder: how did we get here? I’m having one of those moments now. Maybe you are, too.