1839) [R]emember that [fashion] magazines are selling images of what you can't get. It's about unconsummated desire. The object is to make you want to go out and buy lipstick so you can feel better about yourself.

anonymous fashion magazine editor
quoted by John Tierney in
"The Big City: Masochism Central" in
New York Times Magazine (6/16/1996)

1840) [An online friend] said to me not long ago that e-mail discussions, by their very nature, required exaggeration. She is correct, IMO, to a certain degree. We feel the need to ensure the attention we think our letter deserves. So there is a great temptation to overstate and exaggerate. And before you know it, some becomes all, sometimes becomes always, sometimes not becomes never, the rejection of a part becomes the rejection of the whole, the failure to read a certain book becomes a failure to read all books, and pride in flag and country becomes chauvinism.

Sanya A. Smyth
personal e-mail, (6/13/1996)

1841) Both [Howard Hughes and his father] had that cleverness and ruthlessness and attention to detail usually called a "knack" for making money.

Donald E. Westlake
"A Prison of His Own Making" in
New York Times Book Review (6/16/1996)
[review of Howard Hughes: The Untold Story
by Peter Harry Brown and Pat H. Broeske]

1842) [John Wayne's] attachment to a single unchanging cinematic role may have stemmed from his own uncertain sense of who he was. Before he was John Wayne he was Marion Mitchell Morrison, but from his birth in 1907 until he was 5 he was Marion Robert Morrison. His family called him Robert. When he was 5 his mother had another son, and named him Robert, and told her first-born that from now on he would have a new middle name and be called Marion. In one fell swoop the boy had lost his pride of place, his mother's lap and his name. One can only imagine the effect of this on a young child.

Jackson Lears
"Screw Ambiguity" in
The New Republic (4/22/1996)
[review of John Wayne: American
by Randy Roberts and James S. Olsen]

[Note: cf. #1855 Heller]

1843) There is a kind of ambitious young person who mistakes frenetic movement for advancement in the world. He'll call you from the road and say, "I'm in Bangladesh on business, heading for Iceland," and you know that he thinks this is sufficient explanation for his purpose in life.

Michael Lewis
"Campaign Journal: Automatic Pilot" in
The New Republic (6/24/1996)

1844) On the plane heading back East I look up and take a mental photograph. A wise old man once told me how to do this: look hard, close your eyes, try to recall what you have seen. Repeat this procedure three times and you'll always remember the picture.

Michael Lewis
"Campaign Journal: Automatic Pilot" in
The New Republic (6/24/1996)

1845) Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

Ron Robertson
personal e-mail (06/20/1996)

1846) If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it is that you can kill anyone.

The Godfather: Part II (film, 1974)
screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo
based on the novel by Mario Puzo
directed by Francis Ford Coppola
spoken by the character "Michael Corleone"
played by Al Pacino

1847) Where it is a question of criminal justice, it is all too easy to imagine a society that wished to humiliate its criminals, but was fastidious about seeing that only the guilty were humiliated. The society depicted in The Scarlet Letter is a fair approximation of this state of things - sinners were not only to be punished, but were to be cast out of society. Still, it was a society that cared very much that what we suffered was our just deserts. The Alabama legislature recently reintroduced chain gangs; and its aim was precisely to humiliate the prisoners by doing so - the modern, lightweight shackles would do none of the physical damage that old-fashioned chains had done, but they would do just as much emotional damage. Lawmakers took it for granted that nobody ought to be in an Alabama jail without having committed a crime; they did not repudiate justice, but they expressly denied that criminals had to be treated decently.

Alan Ryan
"The Politics of Dignity"
New York Review of Books (7/11/1996)
[review of The Decent Society
by Avishai Margalit]

1848) No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.

William S. Burroughs (attributed)
posted by Deborah L. Benedict on the
Court-TV message boards (6/23/1996)