revolutionary road

"At first glance, all the upper floors of the Knox Building looked alike. Each was a big open room, ablaze with fluorescent ceiling lights, that had been divided into a maze of aisles and cubicles by shoulder-high partitions. The upper panels of these dividers, waist to shoulder, were made of thick unframed plate glass that was slightly corrugated to achieve a blue-white semi-transparency; and the overall effect of this, to a man getting off the elevator and looking out across the room, was that of the wide indoor lake in which swimmers far and near were moving, some making steady headway, some treading water, others seen in the act of breaking to the surface or going under, and many submerged, their faces loosened into wavering pink blurs as they drowned at their desks."
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"The trouble, he guessed, was mainly that she talked too much. It was also that so much of her talk rang false, that so many of its possibilities for charm were blocked and buried under the stylized ceremony of its cuteness."
--Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

"There are certain rights that are not to be subject to popular votes, otherwise they are not fundamental rights. If every fundamental liberty can be stripped away by a majority vote, then it's not a fundamental liberty."
--California State Attorney General Jerry Brown

your own personal hero

"Everyone's a hero in their own way, in their own not that heroic way."
--Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jed Whedon

All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
--Cyril Connolly