The danger in reviewing and teaching literature for a living (is) you can develop a kind of knee-jerk superiority to the material you're "decoding
Meekly swallowing and assimilating the customs of the more powerful has always been a strategy by which the less powerful have tried to fit in.
Those straight-spined parishioners could justify their exhibitionism by telling themselves that they were setting an example, even educating the rest of us.
I think the influence of books is neither direct and more predictable. Books themselves are too unruly, and so are readers.
Generations of readers, bored with their own alienating, repetitious jobs, have been mesmerized by Crusoe's essential, civilization-building chores.
Richie: How is our witch? Boy: Yeah, our pumpkin? Tommy Doyle: Leave me alone! The boys: He's gonna get you, He's gonna get you, He's gonna get you, He's gonna get you! Richie: Boogeyman is coming! Tommy Doyle: Leave me alone! Boy: He doesn't believe...
General Allenby: I believe your name will be a household word when you'll have to go to the War Museum to find who Allenby was. You're the most extraordinary man I've ever met! T.E. Lawrence: Leave me alone! General Allenby: What? T.E. Lawrence: Leav...
Like overzealous religious converts, climbers originally from the lower rungs of society tend to go overboard when they ape the upper class.
Pride and dignity would belong to women if only men would leave them alone.
Like a lot of other bashful introverts, I discovered that I like teaching a lot because it's like acting. When I stepped into the classroom, I stepped into a role, one that allowed me to forget myself.
I value being able to go into a record shop and people leaving me alone.
Leave me, and go to another, but never stand alone
Let me alone," said Mildred "Let alone!" He almost cried out with laughter. "Letting you alone is easy, but how can I leave alone? That's what's wrong. We need to be let alone. We need to be upset and stirred and bothered, once in a while, anyway. No...
The midwife considers the miracle of childbirth as normal, and leaves it alone unless there's trouble. The obstetrician normally sees childbirth as trouble; if he leaves it alone, it's a miracle.
I glared at him. “You didn't leave me alone for five minutes, you left me alone for a week. I could have hacked myself to pieces if there's been more than one mango in the house. You could have come home to a very gory scene. The press would have h...
It's not that I don't like people. It's just that when I'm in the company of others - even my nearest and dearest - there always comes a moment when I'd rather be reading a book.
One of the many drawbacks of this "I teach what I am" approach is that it stifles classroom discussion. Any disagreement with the professor's expertise comes off as an ad hominem attack.
You can't please everybody. I give up. I'm not trying to. I don't care. Leave me alone with that.
I know most of the photographers in Ireland. And if I don't want my photograph taken, they will leave me alone.
From the photo albums, every single print of her had been peeled away. Shots of the both of us together had been cut, the parts with her neatly trimmed away, leaving my image behind. Photos of me alone or of mountains and rivers and deer and cats wer...
I’m so fucking tired of being alone. I was scared that he’d tell me to fucking leave. Because that means going back to a life I can’t see for myself anymore.
