Lillian Boxfish Takes A Walk Quotes
"No, there wasn’t. She was just an advertisement: the poster girl for the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad."
"Miss Phoebe Snow has stopped to show her ticket at the gate, you know."
"A cozy seat, a dainty treat make Phoebe’s happiness complete."
"Her laundry bill for fluff and frill Miss Phoebe finds is nearly nil."
"Electric light dispels the night upon the Road of Anthracite."
"On time the trip ends without a slip, and Phoebe sadly takes her grip."
"I’d rather have a fur coat now than crumbs at fifty anyhow."
"Let no one say and say it to your shame that all was beauty here until you came."
"It’s tactless to be too darn smart, and hiding your brains is an art."
"What makes you seek your fortune here in Gotham? You must be as queer as I am."
"I thought wastefulness and greed were the driving engines of Wall Street."
"You’re different from everyone else. All the rules and emotions and obligations that guide most of us through life—they’re invisible to us. They’re natural, like breathing. But they’re visible to you."
"If I understood better than you did yourself why you thought or did or wanted something, then I could control you."
"Why not eat Cracker Jack in the street if that’s your pleasure?"
"What a mess. The whole goal would be for me to die quickly, not to pass torturously of blood poisoning or god knows what months after the fact."
"This city is my house. It is still my house."
"In what time remains, very little that is broken can be fixed."
"What rescued me, I think, was Max’s realization that he might not want to be within mere blocks of his parents any longer—after living under their roof his entire life—now that he had a wife."
"Years later, I would come to wonder why I even had that memory of standing in the empty apartment, soon to be ours, Max holding my hand and me breathing in toast."
"I never like to walk back the same way that I came if I can help it, but sometimes I can’t help it."
"Oftentimes, what causes old people to become poor walkers is poor walking. One must bend one’s knees. One must lift one’s feet up. One must be unceasing. One mustn’t shuffle."
"It makes me happy, and also sad, to think that this is where playful language is cherished now, and where the verbosity that I and my clever friends prized in our youth has gone to reside: the slums."
"Words don’t cost a penny; during the Depression, they were all many of us had. I used them to make a fortune."
"Later, people got richer, and they seemed to lose interest in what could be gotten for free."
"The way I spoke to them changed accordingly."
"The blocks around Washington Square Park are best avoided in the dark, and now’s a fine time to commence my westward drift: I have a quick stop I’d like to make for auld lang syne."
"One leaves a sanitarium with a renewed enthusiasm for making oneself up."
"When life seems gray and short of fizz, it seems that way because it is."
"The counterfeit Boxfish—that crazy woman, that sorry drunk—was a mistake, a wrong turn, a missed stitch."
"Never in my life have I shown up at a party empty-handed, and I am not about to spoil my record tonight."
"I need to get a hostess gift for Wendy, and something to share with her guests."
"The shock of recognition almost jolts the light from my hand."
"History is packed with poets more committed to memory than I."
"I was not sentimental over him, though I was devoted, as he was to me."
"If you can fool even your closest friends into thinking you’re sane, then maybe you’re not so crazy after all."
"Burning a bridge, as any tactician will tell you, sometimes saves more than it costs."
"The point of living in the world is just to stay interested."
"As much a listener as a talker, Sadie was the first person I remember encouraging me to write."