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The Moviegoer: quotes (4)

The boy has done it! He has won the title to his own existence, as plenary an existence now as Holden’s, by refusing to be stampeded like the ladies from Hattiesburg. He is a citizen like Holden; two men of the world they are. All at once the world is open to him. Nobody threatens…

A Confederacy of Dunces: quotes (3)

  Is it part of the police department to harass me when this is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world? . . . This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected…

Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (2)

If I had stopped smoking, would I have become the strong, ideal man I expected to be? Perhaps it was this suspicion that bound me to my habit, for it is comfortable to live in the belief that you are great, though your greatness is latent. I venture this hypothesis to explain my youthful weakness,…

The Moviegoer: quotes (3)

Truthfully, it is the fear of exposing my own ignorance which constrains me from mentioning the object of my search. For, to begin with, I cannot even answer this, the simplest and most basic of all questions: Am I, in my search, a hundred miles ahead of my fellow Americans or a hundred miles behind…

Ian Dury

Born on this date and it’s just over twenty years since his death. Here’s a decent enough write-up from ten years ago. Shortly before his death in March 2000, Paul McCartney paid him a visit. It was “like having the Queen Mother coming round for tea,” he told his wife. Ian Dury at the Dentist…

Little Richard

Rolling Stone Little Richard. If it hadn’t have been for him, I probably wouldn’t have gone into music. When I was nine and first saw Little Richard in a film that played around town—I think it was probably Girl Can’t Help It —seeing those four saxophonists onstage, it was like, “I want to be in…