Best 109 quotes of Florence King on MyQuotes

Florence King

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    Florence King

    A cardinal rule of writing is never interrupt yourself to explain something. If you must bring up an obscure topic, drop informative hints about it as you go along so that you don't end up with the entire explanation all in one place. This keeps you from skidding to a stop and sounding teacherish. Otherwise it's better to omit the obscure topic altogether, or as mothers might put it: if you can't say it interestingly, don't say it at all.

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    Florence King

    Affirmative action was designed originally for "women and other minorities" but the phrase has become just another tortured euphemism. Female conscientiousness and eagerness to please have always made women good students and natural test takers. Jews have gloried in scholarship throughout the ages, and Asians of both sexes score so high on SATs and IQ tests that they regard affirmative action as an impediment. Affirmative action really means favoritism for blacks for the sake of racial peace, but the favor is pure chimera, and so, increasingly, is the peace.

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    Florence King

    Agoraphobia was my quirky armor against a gregarious America.

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    Florence King

    A home without a grandmother is like an egg without salt.

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    Florence King

    America is the only country in the world where you can suffer culture shock without leaving home.

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    Florence King

    America is not a democracy, it's an absolute monarchy ruled by King Kid. In a nation of immigrants, the child is automatically more of an American than his parents. Americans regard children as what Mr. Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs called betters. Aping their betters, American adults do their best to turn themselves into children. Puerility exercises droit de seigneur everywhere.

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    Florence King

    American couples have gone to such lengths to avoid the interference of in-laws that they have to pay marriage counselors to interfere between them.

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    Florence King

    Americans are so emotionally fragile that soon we will have to be carried around in plastic bubbles and fed with an eye-dropper.

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    Florence King

    Americans respect talent only insofar as it leads to fame, and we reserve our most fervent admiration for famous people who destroy their lives as well as their talent. The fatal flaws of Elvis, Judy, and Marilyn register much higher on our national applause meter than their living achievements. In Amerca, talent is merely a tool for becoming famous in life so you can become more famous in death - where all are equal.

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    Florence King

    Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty - as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it.

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    Florence King

    Animal rights activists gives disillusioned feminists an excuse to go back to being women protecting wee creatures without compromising their radical credentials

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    Florence King

    Any discussion of the problems of being funny in America will not make sense unless we substitute the word wit for humor. Humor inspires sympathetic good-natured laughter and is favored by the healing-power gang. Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down.

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    Florence King

    Any hope that America would finally grow up vanished with the rise of fundamentalist Christianity. Fundamentalism, with its born-again regression, its pink-and-gold concept of heaven, its literal-mindedness, its rambunctious good cheer... its anti-intellectualism... its puerile hymns... and its faith-healing... are made to order for King Kid America.

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    Florence King

    As the only class distinction available in a democracy, the college degree has created a caste society as rigid as ancient India's. Condemning elitism and simultaneously quaking in fear that our children won't become members of the elite, we send them to college, not to learn, but to "be" college graduates, rationalizing our snobbery with the cliché that high technology has eliminated the need for the manual labor that we secretly hold in contempt.

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    Florence King

    because the theater lost a Barrymore every time a Southerner decided not to go on the stage, just about anything that comes out of a Southern mouth is bound to be a ringing line.

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    Florence King

    By sending the contradictory message that the famous are just plain folks on Mount Olympus, America has forged a relentless tension between loftiness and accessibility. Stir in the fact that the inborn talent and intelligence needed to achieve fame are immune to distributive tinkering by government programs and you have a definition of fame certain to produce envious rage: somebody screwed democracy.

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    Florence King

    Chinks in America's egalitarian armor are not hard to find. Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

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    Florence King

    Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

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    Florence King

    During the feminist seventies men were caught between a rock and a hard-on; in the fathering eighties they are caught between good hugs and bad hugs.

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    Florence King

    Each time a mediocre singer performs, he is saying, in effect, "This is good enough for you." The audience, thrust into that familiar American mood of knowing something is wrong but not knowing what it is, unconsciously absorbs the insult and projects it back onto the mediocre performer in the form of inattention, rudeness and noise.

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    Florence King

    Episcopalians have always preferred the flying buttress to the pillar of the church.

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    Florence King

    Familiarity doesn't breed contempt, it is contempt.

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    Florence King

    Families composed of rugged individualists have to do things obliquely.

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    Florence King

    God may have loved the common people, but a trip to any shopping mall suggests that He made far too many of them.

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    Florence King

    Golf is an exercise in Scottish pointlessness for people who are no longer able to throw telephone poles at each other.

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    Florence King

    Hereditary monarchy offers numerous advantages for America. It is the only form of government able to unify a heterogeneous people. Thanks to centuries of dynastic marriage, the family tree of every royal house is an ethnic grab bag with something for everybody. We need this badly; America is the only country in the world where you can suffer culture shock without leaving home. We can't go on much longer depending upon disasters like Pearl Harbor and the Iranian hostage-taking to "bring us together.

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    Florence King

    He travels fastest who travels alone, and that goes double for she. Real feminism is spinsterhood.

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    Florence King

    I cherish the review-as-literature; as lapidary journalism in the eighteenth-century mode, the last hard sparkling diamond in theessayists's tarnished crown. To me, writing a good review is not just a way to make extra money, but a sacred duty.

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    Florence King

    I do believe in reincarnation, but I do not believe there is life before noon.

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    Florence King

    I don't mind being regarded as perverted and unnatural, but I would die if people thought I was a Democrat.

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    Florence King

    If we define a misanthrope as 'someone who does not suffer fools and likes to see fools suffer,' we have described a person with something to look forward to.

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    Florence King

    If whisky or salt won't cure it, then to hell with it. I worry about important things.

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    Florence King

    If you ever meet someone who cannot understand why solitary confinement is considered punishment, you have met a misanthrope.

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    Florence King

    I have a professional acquaintance whose recent eyelid job has left her with a permanent expression of such poleaxed astonishment that she looks at all times as if she had just read one of my books.

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    Florence King

    I'm for prayer in the schools because ritual and ceremony are calming and civilizing, and the little fartlings should be tamped down whenever possible.

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    Florence King

    In its purest sense, nicknaming is an elitist ritual practiced by those who cherish hierarchy. For preppies it's a smoke signal that allows Bunny to tell Pooky that they belong to the same tribe, while among the good old boys it serves the cause of masculine dominance by identifying Bear and Wrecker as Alpha males.

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    Florence King

    In Mississippi the important thing is hooch, not bar equipment.

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    Florence King

    In other countries, congenital introverts simply remain introverts all their lives, neither advancing nor retreating, but America's commitment to extroversion as a national art form can abrade some naturally aloof personalities until they flower into deadly nightshade.

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    Florence King

    Insecurity breeds treachery: if you are kind to people who hate themselves, they will hate you as well.

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    Florence King

    In social matters, pointless conventions are not merely the bee sting of etiquette, but the snake bite of moral order.

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    Florence King

    In the last few years, race relations in America have entered upon a period of intensified craziness wherein fear of being called a racist has so thoroughly overwhelmed fear of being a racist that we are in danger of losing sight of the distinction.

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    Florence King

    It takes only one child to raze a village.

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    Florence King

    It's the Government's job to print the money, deliver the mail and declare war. Now give me my cigarettes.

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    Florence King

    I've always said that next to Imperial China, the South is the best place in the world to be an old lady.

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    Florence King

    I wasn't used to children and they were getting on my nerves. Worse, it appeared that I was a child, too. I hadn't known that before; I thought I was just short.

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    Florence King

    Judge not, lest ye be judged judgmental.

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    Florence King

    Kings and queens might do wicked things, but they don't nag. One thing I like about Bloody Mary: she never said a word about lung cancer.

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    Florence King

    Learn to spot and avoid "writer groupies." The writer's self-sufficiency and our love for our work tend to attract insecure people who never can get enough love. They grow jealous of our work and come to regard it as a rival. These people can destroy you, so kick them out of your life or don't admit them in the first place.

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    Florence King

    Let's bring back grandmothers! A real family consists of three generations. It's time Americans stopped worrying about interference and being a burden on the children and regrouped under one roof.

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    Florence King

    Men are not very good at loving, but they are experts at admiring and respecting; the woman who goes after their admiration and respect will often come out better than she who goes out after their love.