“
Find out who you are and do it on purpose.
”
”
Dolly Parton
“
If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.
”
”
Dolly Parton
“
I'm not going to limit myself just because people won't accept the fact that I can do something else.
”
”
Dolly Parton
“
People always ask me how long it takes to do my hair. I don’t know, I’m never there.
”
”
Dolly Parton
“
You’re too hard on yourself,’she said. ‘You can do long-term love. You’ve done it better than anyone I know.’
‘How? My longest relationship was two years and that was over when I was twenty-four.’
‘I’m talking about you and me, ’she said
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know about Love: A Memoir)
“
It is futile and knackering to try and make all your tiny choices representative of your moral compass then beat yourself up when this plan inevitably fails. Feminists can get waxed. Priests can swear. Vegetarians can wear leather shoes. Do as much good as you can. The weighty representation of the world cannot rest on every decision you make.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love)
“
Life is a wonderful, mesmerizing, magical, fun, silly thing. And humans are astounding. We all know we’re going to die, and yet we still live. We shout and curse and care when the full bin bag breaks, yet with every minute that passes we edge closer to the end. We marvel at a nectarine sunset over the M25 or the smell of a baby’s head or the efficiency of flat-pack furniture, even though we know that everyone we love will cease to exist one day. I don’t know how we do it.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir)
“
You'll never do a whole lot unless you're brave enough to try.
”
”
Dolly Parton
“
I leaned across the table towards the crumb-thrower. "Do that again," I said, loud enough to be heard over the opera singer, Dolly, my mother, and the smell of the breadsticks, "and I will sell your firstborn child to the devil.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Forever (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #3))
“
God is in everything I do and all my work glorifies Him.
”
”
Dolly Parton
“
Be alone, Jen. You know how to be alone without being lonely. Do you know how rare that is? Do you know how much I wish I could do that? It’s a wonderful thing you’ve got going on there.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
Cause I am strong and I can prove it
And I got my dreams to see me through
It's just a mountain, I can move it
And with faith enough there's nothing I can't do
And I can see the light of a clear blue morning
And I can see the light of brand new day
I can see the light of a clear blue morning
And everything's gonna be all right
It's gonna be okay
[lyrics from "Light of a Clear Blue Morning"]
”
”
Dolly Parton
“
Life is just a series of peaks and troughs. And you don't know whether you're in a trough until you're climbing out, or on a peak until you're coming down. And that's it you know, you never know what's round the corner. But it's all good. "If you want the rainbow, you've gotta put up with the rain." Do you know which "philosopher" said that? Dolly Parton. And people say she's just a big pair of tits.
”
”
Ricky Gervais (Office, the Scripts)
“
No matter how uncertain and unpredictable life gets, some people really do walk next to you for ever.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love)
“
Do you think we’d ever be friends if we met now?” “No, I don’t think so.” “Me neither.” “Sort of magic, isn’t it? To know that we could meet the most exciting person in the world, but they’d never be able to recreate the history you and I have. What a unique superpower we have over each other.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Ghosts)
“
Life is just a series of peaks and troughs, and you don't whether you're in a trough until you're climbing out, or on a peak until you're coming down. And that's it, you know, you never know what's round the corner. But it's all good. "If you want the rainbow you've got to put up with the rain". Do you know which "philosopher" said that? Dolly Parton. And people say she's just a big pair of tits.
”
”
David Brent
“
What Do Women Want?"
I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.
”
”
Kim Addonizio
“
I know who I am; I know what I can and can't do. I know what I will and won't do. I know what I am capable of and I don't agree to do things that I don't think I can pull off.
”
”
Dolly Parton
“
I once heard a theory about the first relationship that occurs after a big relationship ends. It’s called the 90/10 rule. The theory goes: whatever the crucial 10 per cent is that was missing from your partner who was otherwise totally right for you is the thing you look for in the following person. That missing 10 per cent becomes such a fixation that, when you do find someone who has it, you ignore the fact they don’t have the other 90 per cent that the previous partner had.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood.
Can we blame the child for resenting the fantasy of largeness? Big, soft arms and deep voices in the dark saying, "Tell Papa, tell Mama, and we'll make it right." The child, screaming for refuge, senses how feeble a shelter the twig hut of grown-up awareness is. They claim strength, these parents, and complete sanctuary. The weeping earth itself knows how desperate is the child's need for exactly that sanctuary. How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia.
Grownups can deal with scraped knees, dropped ice-cream cones, and lost dollies, but if they suspected the real reasons we cry they would fling us out of their arms in horrified revulsion. Yet we are small and as terrified as we are terrifying in our ferocious appetites.
We need that warm adult stupidity. Even knowing the illusion, we cry and hide in their laps, speaking only of defiled lollipops or lost bears, and getting lollipop or a toy bear'd worth of comfort. We make do with it rather than face alone the cavernous reaches of our skull for which there is no remedy, no safety, no comfort at all. We survive until, by sheer stamina, we escape into the dim innocence of our own adulthood and its forgetfulness.
”
”
Katherine Dunn (Geek Love)
“
A reminder that no matter what we lose, no matter how uncertain and unpredictable life gets, some people really do walk next to you forever.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir)
“
But I feel more powerful than ever. And more peaceful too. I am living more truthfully than I’ve ever lived. I may not be the exact portrait of womanhood that my teenage self envisaged (sophisticated and slim; wearing black dresses and drinking martinis and meeting men at book launches and exhibition openings). I may not have all the exact things I thought I’d have at thirty. Or all the things I’ve been told I should have. But I feel content; grateful for every morning that I wake up with another day on this earth and another chance to do good and feel good and make others feel good too.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir)
“
Be the alligator girl. Be whatever your dreams and your luck will let you be. Wear your green cornflakes with pride. Snarl at the crowds, and do your best to make them flinch. Give them a quarter's worth of wonder.
”
”
Dolly Parton (Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business)
“
I SEE THE GIRL WRITES IN GREEN CRAYON ON PINK PAPER WITH A MOUSE IN THE CORNER. THE MOUSE IS WEARING A DRESS.
'I ought to point out that she decided to do that so the Hogfather would think she was sweet,' said Susan. 'Including the deliberate bad spelling. But look, why are you ...'
SHE SAYS SHE IS FIVE YEARS OLD.
'In years, yes. In cynicism, she's about thirty-five. Why are you doing the...'
BUT SHE BELIEVES IN THE HOGFATHER?
'She'd believe in anything if there was a dolly in it for her.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Hogfather (Discworld, #20; Death, #4))
“
Do as much good as you can. The weighty representation of the world cannot rest on every decision you make.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love)
“
Jesus fucking Christ, don’t have a kid or get married because you’re worried about being alone,’ she said, rubbing my back. I sat upright in my chair and she held me by my shoulders. ‘Be alone, Jen. You know how to be alone without being lonely. Do you know how rare that is? Do you know how much I wish I could do that? It’s a wonderful thing you’ve got going on there.’ Avi came into the kitchen and put the kettle
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
A boy coming up on acid heard repetitive ringing coming from my tent and thought it was Kraftwerk doing a surprise set.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir)
“
A bird & a fish can fall in love, but where do they make a home?
”
”
Dolly Parton
“
Do I get a bonus for letting him grab my boob?”
“Your boob, like the rest of you, belongs to the NYPSD. Besides, McNab’s going to ride you like a racehorse first chance. That’s your bonus.”
“You brought up sex and McNab!”
“This once, also your bonus.”
“I’ve got this outfit at home Dolly would wear. I’m going to put it on tonight and—”
“You didn’t earn that big a bonus.
”
”
J.D. Robb (Calculated in Death (In Death, #36))
“
And the truth is, I was only ever going out to find someone to stay in with.’ He half laughs at his own sentimentality. ‘I don’t do well without responsibilities. I’ve accepted that I’m quite a boring bloke. I like having people to look after and feed.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
You don’t need someone else to tell you what to do or who to be. You’re your own mother now. You have to listen to what you want.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir)
“
I've often said I don't lose my temper as much as use it. I don’t do either unless I have to because I love peace and harmony, but when you step in my territory, I will call you on it.
”
”
Dolly Parton
“
But I’m not a member of that club any more. No one is. It’s been disbanded, dissolved, the domain is no longer valid. So what do I do with all its stuff? Where do I put it all? Where do I take all my new discoveries now I’m no longer in a tribe of two? And if I start a new sub-genre of love with someone else, am I allowed to bring in all the things I loved from the last one? Or would that be weird? Why do I find this so hard?
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
I’ve watched it time and time again—a woman always slots into a man’s life better than he slots into hers. She will be the one who spends the most time at his flat, she will be the one who makes friends with all his friends and their girlfriends. She will be the one who sends his mother a bunch of flowers on her birthday. Women don’t like this rigmarole any more than men do, but they’re better at it—they just get on with it. This means that when a woman my age falls in love with a man, the list of priorities goes from this: Family Friends To this: Family Boyfriend Boyfriend’s family Boyfriend’s friends Girlfriends of the boyfriend’s friends Friends Which means, on average, you go from seeing your friend every weekend to once every six weekends. She becomes a baton and you’re the one at the very end of the track. You get your go for, say, your birthday or a brunch, then you have to pass her back round to the boyfriend to start the long, boring rotation again. These gaps in each other’s lives slowly but surely form a gap in the middle of your friendship. The love is still there, but the familiarity is not. Before you know it, you’re not living life together anymore. You’re living life separately with respective boyfriends then meeting up for dinner every six weekends to tell each other what living is like. I now understand why our mums cleaned the house before their best friend came round and asked them “What’s the news, then?” in a jolly, stilted way. I get how that happens. So don’t tell me when you move in with your boyfriend that nothing will change. There will be no road trip. The cycle works when it comes to holidays as well—I’ll get my buddy back for every sixth summer, unless she has a baby in which case I’ll get my road trip in eighteen years’ time. It never stops happening. Everything will change.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir)
“
Was it a game you wanted to complete? You met a woman who had her life together, and you wanted to see if you could pull it apart? You wanted to know that you could get her to fall in love with you, say all the things you wanted her to say, do all the things you wanted her to do, then the game was finished and you could turn it off?
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Ghosts)
“
Yes, it’s unfortunate that we have been conditioned to see an alternative to motherhood as not normal. But you do all realise that some of the most brilliant women in the world don’t have kids, right? Oprah, Gloria Steinem, Helen Mirren, Dolly Parton? Do you think their lives carry an air of tragedy because they never had children? I don’t. I’m sure they all had different reasons for not doing it, some maybe couldn’t, some didn’t want to, but these women’s lives are not empty because of that. I think it’s important we take the lead from our heroes and for everyone to stop valuing women on whether they do, or do not, become mothers. The irony of yours and your listeners’ opinions is that it is you boxing women in to these roles, not men. It’s highly un-feminist of you.’ She
”
”
Dawn O'Porter (The Cows)
“
He took off his denim jacket and draped it around my shoulders because I was cold. I could tell he was just as cold as I was, but I didn’t want to stop his big show of masculinity. How could I? I’d bought front-row tickets to it. I wondered how much of his behaviour this evening had been dictated by a pressure to perform his gender in such a demonstrative way. But then again, what was I doing? Why was I wearing a pair of four-inch heels that gave me blisters?
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Ghosts)
“
In her last weeks, she had moments of lucidity, and I cherished them when I was around to talk to her. One of these conversations happened when it was just me and her in the hospital room.
‘I suspect you will never have a husband,’ she said, looking at me intently from her bed.
‘Would you be upset if that happened?’ I asked.
‘Your mother would be,’ she said, then lowered her voice. ‘But I think you would be wise not to.’ This surprised me as I had always thought that she and my grandfather had been very happy together.
‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.
Her hand, spotted in soft-brown splodges, the rails of her bones protruding, flapped gently at me to take it.
I cupped it in both of mine.
‘You have a home that is yours,’ she said. ‘And your own money. Don’t you?’
‘I have a bit of money, yes.’
‘And you have your education. And you have your career.’ I nodded. ‘Then you have everything,’ she said.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
Every heterosexual woman I know is emotionally paralysed in relationships by this fear of “scaring men off”. Then you have your Lucys of this world, these total anomalies, who know what they want and say: “I’m the boss, here are the rules, do as I say.” And so many men seem to love it. Like it’s a relief, or something.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Ghosts)
“
People ask me, “Do you ever run out of patience? Are you ever rude to people?” Sometimes I am. I hate when it happens, but it seems like some people just try to get on your nerves. There are times when I feel like saying something like, “Why don’t you get out of my face, you ugly woman. And take those bratty kids with you!” But at times like that I usually get all flustered. I get confused and say stupid stuff like, “Kiss my ass, that’s what you are. And don’t think I can’t do it!
”
”
Dolly Parton (Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business)
“
But of course I know I am merely an aphrodisiac in their game of Domestic Bliss – I know when I leave they’ll rip each other’s clothes off, having got all revved up on an extended joint discourse about their holiday in the Philippines, particularly when they both said the same island when I asked them what their favourite bit was. I am just a reluctant audience member. But I sit and watch all these shows anyway because the alternative – losing my friends – is not an option. And when Farly and Scott weren’t doing Their Bit on me, I discovered, to my utter shock, that Scott and I got on rather well. In fact, I resented that I hadn’t realized this sooner as I would have enjoyed his company when he was round when Farly and I lived together, instead of just grunting at him. He was funny and smart. He read
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love)
“
From a distance we (literally) do not see people as individuals.
”
”
Dolly Chugh (The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias)
“
Hell is not a place where we ourselves suffer. Hell is where you watch people you care about suffer and do nothing about it.
”
”
Dolly Chugh (The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias)
“
Do the transgressions of the artist undermine the pleasure to be found in the art?
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Ghosts)
“
Find out who you are and do it on purpose, with purpose.
”
”
Dolly Parton (Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones)
“
I don't care what other people do as long as I'm left alone to do what I do and to do it my way.
”
”
Dolly Parton (Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones)
“
A clue to the right work for you is what you will do for free.
”
”
Dolly Freed (Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and with (Almost) No Money (Revised Edition))
“
I'm more along the lines of a Dolly Parton. What you see is what you get!
”
”
Leslie Jordan (How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived)
“
Driven to insanity, driven to the edge
Driven to the point of almost no return
Driven to think awful thoughts, do awful things
But at least I’d like to think I’ve learned
I’m driven
Driven to be smarter
Driven to work harder
Driven to be better everyday
Driven to keep on and on
To achieve the things I want
I’ll be sorry if I don’t
Make the most of livin’
I’m driven
”
”
Dolly Parton (Run, Rose, Run)
“
Dolly is obsessed by sexual thoughts for which she finds no outlet, and will tease and martyrise other girls, or even our younger instructors because they do have innocent dates with boys.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov
“
There was no specific requirement for being a twenty-something—it’s what I found so disorientating about the experience. I never knew where I was meant to be or what I was meant to be doing
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir)
“
So here I was trying to get married to a man who hadn’t really asked me, with a boss that didn’t want me to and a town that wouldn’t let me do it when I wanted. Yet I knew in my heart it was right.
”
”
Dolly Parton (Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business)
“
Eleanor loved to tell me that life is shit. She told me every week. She told me it was going to disappoint me. She reminded me that there was nothing I could do to control it. I relaxed into that inevitability.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir)
“
My little Johnnie,
Because I like you so much, and because you’re so far away that I can’t
give you a little kiss, I’m writing this letter to ask if you like me as much as
I do you? Answer me immediately.
A thousand kisses from your Dollie—
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Einstein: His Life and Universe)
“
Calvin’s work. Boxed and sealed. “We can use this dolly,” Frask said, wheeling it over. “It’s eight boxes total. But we need to hurry—I have to turn in these keys by five o’clock.” “Is this legal?” Miss Frask reached for the first box. “Do we care?
”
”
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
“
You know damn well that's not how the wire works, and if you weren't afraid of it, you'd have one yourself. It's the same as the implants, just like the dollie-slots, but it gives me an edge, yeah, because I'm not afraid of it, of what I can do with it.
”
”
Melissa Scott (Trouble and Her Friends)
“
Okay, Dolly Brooke killed her because she was going to marry a quote nigger unquote, and how do we prove it?'
He frowned. 'I have told you not to use that word in my hearing.'
'I was merely quoting. It isn't - '
'Shut up. I mean the word 'unquote' and you know it.
”
”
Rex Stout (A Right to Die (Nero Wolfe, #40))
“
I tried every diet in the book. I tried some that weren’t in the book. I tried eating the book. It tasted better than most of the diets. I tried the Scarsdale diet and the Stillman water diet (you remember that one, where you run weight off trying to get to the bathroom). I tried Optifast, Juicefast, and Waterfast. I even took those shots that I think were made from cow pee. I endured every form of torture anybody with a white coat and a clipboard could devise for a girl who really liked fried pork chops.
One night while I was on some kind of liquid-protein diet made from bone marrow, or something equally appetizing, I was with a group of friends at a Howard Johnson’s and some of them were having fried clams. I’ll never forget sitting there with all of that glorious fried fat filling my nostrils and feeling completely left out. I went home and wrote one of my biggest hits, “Two Doors Down.” I also went off my diet and had some fried clams.
There were times when I thought of chucking it all in. “Damn the movie,” I would say. “I’m just gonna eat everything and go ahead and weigh five hundred pounds and have to be buried in a piano case.” Luckily, a few doughnuts later, that thought would pass and I would be back to the goal at hand. I remember something in a book I read called Gentle Eating. The author said you should pretend the angels are eating with you and that you want to save some for them. I loved that idea, because I love angels. I have to admit, though, there were times I would slap those angels out of the way and have their part too. A true hog will do that.
”
”
Dolly Parton (Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business)
“
Jane started saying ‘Welcome to being in a relationship’ to me over and over again.
I’d tell her about all the compromises I was making and how much Andy’s self-absorption could irritate me and how I’d noticed that he’d stopped finding me sexy and started finding me sweet – that he used to grab my bum and kiss me, and now he kissed me on the head and pulled the zipper of my jacket up and down in a cutesy way. ‘Wait till he stops finding you sweet,’ she said. ‘That’s a whole other phase.’
I told her about how much time was spent comforting him and buoying him up and getting him out of low moods. How his emotions were always more important than mine – that when we had arguments, his feelings were discussed as facts and mine were interrogated as fabrications. ‘Jen,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘do you even want a boyfriend?’
I asked her if this was all stuff she put up with and she nodded. ‘Welcome to being in a relationship,’ she said.
And I thought: I don’t want to be welcome here. I don’t want to get comfortable here.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
Reasons Why I Loved Being With Jen
I love what a good friend you are. You’re really engaged with the lives of the people you love. You organize lovely experiences for them. You make an effort with them, you’re patient with them, even when they’re sidetracked by their children and can’t prioritize you in the way you prioritize them.
You’ve got a generous heart and it extends to people you’ve never even met, whereas I think that everyone is out to get me. I used to say you were naive, but really I was jealous that you always thought the best of people.
You are a bit too anxious about being seen to be a good person and you definitely go a bit overboard with your left-wing politics to prove a point to everyone. But I know you really do care. I know you’d sign petitions and help people in need and volunteer at the homeless shelter at Christmas even if no one knew about it. And that’s more than can be said for a lot of us.
I love how quickly you read books and how absorbed you get in a good story. I love watching you lie on the sofa reading one from cover-to-cover. It’s like I’m in the room with you but you’re in a whole other galaxy.
I love that you’re always trying to improve yourself. Whether it’s running marathons or setting yourself challenges on an app to learn French or the fact you go to therapy every week. You work hard to become a better version of yourself. I think I probably didn’t make my admiration for this known and instead it came off as irritation, which I don’t really feel at all.
I love how dedicated you are to your family, even when they’re annoying you. Your loyalty to them wound me up sometimes, but it’s only because I wish I came from a big family.
I love that you always know what to say in conversation. You ask the right questions and you know exactly when to talk and when to listen. Everyone loves talking to you because you make everyone feel important.
I love your style. I know you think I probably never noticed what you were wearing or how you did your hair, but I loved seeing how you get ready, sitting in front of the full-length mirror in our bedroom while you did your make-up, even though there was a mirror on the dressing table.
I love that you’re mad enough to swim in the English sea in November and that you’d pick up spiders in the bath with your bare hands. You’re brave in a way that I’m not.
I love how free you are. You’re a very free person, and I never gave you the satisfaction of saying it, which I should have done. No one knows it about you because of your boring, high-pressure job and your stuffy upbringing, but I know what an adventurer you are underneath all that.
I love that you got drunk at Jackson’s christening and you always wanted to have one more drink at the pub and you never complained about getting up early to go to work with a hangover. Other than Avi, you are the person I’ve had the most fun with in my life.
And even though I gave you a hard time for always trying to for always trying to impress your dad, I actually found it very adorable because it made me see the child in you and the teenager in you, and if I could time-travel to anywhere in history, I swear, Jen, the only place I’d want to go is to the house where you grew up and hug you and tell you how beautiful and clever and funny you are. That you are spectacular even without all your sports trophies and music certificates and incredible grades and Oxford acceptance.
I’m sorry that I loved you so much more than I liked myself, that must have been a lot to carry. I’m sorry I didn’t take care of you the way you took care of me. And I’m sorry I didn’t take care of myself, either. I need to work on it. I’m pleased that our break-up taught me that. I’m sorry I went so mental.
I love you. I always will. I'm glad we met.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
You exorcised the others. You threw away shame and pain and pride…even justice. Everything that interfered with being their obedient little dolly. You kept me locked in whatever they asked, and you never had to pay the price for any of it because you had parts of me to do that for you.
”
”
Sara A. Mueller (The Bone Orchard)
“
You met a woman who had her life together, and you wanted to see if you could pull it apart? You wanted to know that you could get her to fall in love with you, say all the things you wanted her to say, do all the things you wanted her to do, then the game was finished and you could turn it off?
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Ghosts)
“
You know,” I said one day, smiling, “that you’ve given her the name of my doll?”
“What doll?”
“Tina, you don’t remember?”
She touched her forehead as if she had a headache, and said:
“It’s true, but I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“She was a beautiful doll—I was attached to her.”
“My daughter is more beautiful.
”
”
Elena Ferrante (The Story of the Lost Child)
“
Are you going to let that four-armed teenie-bopper play dollies with you til you grow and die?" Sai shuddered, "No, that I will not do. I am praying to The Seven for the courage to find a way out. An honorable man would rather die than submit to such indignities." I squeezed his shoulder, "That's the spirit!
”
”
Nathan Long (Jane Carver of Waar (Jane Carver, #1))
“
I’ve been doing what the elephants do. I’ve been scattering the bones of us and who we were together. ... It’s a weird kind of mourning and a weird kind of celebration, to examine the skeleton of something that was once so magnificent, before you scatter all the fragments of it out into the world to say goodbye.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
I don't try to compete with anybody else. I got to be me. When people who are afraid to be themselves ask me what to do, I tell them, "Don't be a coward. Don't be influenced by other people. You know who you are. If you don't, you need to find out pretty soon. You can't live your life trying to please other people. Go for it!
”
”
Dolly Parton (Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones)
“
Moving heavy objects allowed me to feel manly in the eyes of other men. With the women it didn't matter, but I enjoyed subtly intimidating the guys with bad backs who thought they were helping out by telling us how to pack the truck. The thinking was that because we were furniture movers, we obviously weren't too bright. In addition to being strong and stupid, we were also thought of as dangerous. It might have been an old story to Patrick and the others, but I got a kick out of being mistaken as volatile. All I had to do was throw down my dolly with a little extra force, and a bossy customer would say, "Let's just all calm down and try to work this out.
”
”
David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)
“
Olivia reached for her phone, connected it to his car Bluetooth, and cranked up a Dolly Parton playlist. “Thank God for Dolly,” she said. “See, she was the best part of the night.” They spent the rest of the drive back to her house singing along with Dolly, and they could tell a bunch of the cars around them were doing the same thing.
”
”
Jasmine Guillory (Party of Two (The Wedding Date, #5))
“
Ah,” said Dolly, with soothing gravity, “it’s like the night and the morning, and the sleeping and the waking, and the rain and the harvest — one goes and the other comes, and we know nothing how nor where. We may strive and scrat and fend, but it’s little we can do arter all — the big things come and go wi’ no striving o’ our’n — they do, that they do;
”
”
George Eliot (Complete Works of George Eliot)
“
Do you believe that?" It was the question that had haunted Shivani for three years. Was she guilty, or not guilty? Did love have to stay within proscribed boundaries? When the heart transgressed, did it become a crime? On some days, she felt certain she had done nothing wrong. On others, she felt equally certain she was a sinner, and deserved to be punished.
”
”
Dolly Garland (Fight Like A Girl)
“
How did these women do it? What was their secret? What unexpected, mystical orifice on their body did they allow these men entry to that in turn made them do whatever unreasonable thing they wanted? Or was it that they simply told them what to do and when to do it, and the imposed restriction of choice made their boyfriends feel safely shepherded rather than ready for slaughter? Had I been treating men too much like adults and not enough like little directionless lambs?
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Ghosts)
“
Well, that’s partly true, Master Marner,” said Dolly, sympathetically; “and if you can’t bring your mind to frighten her off touching things, you must do what you can to keep ’em out of her way. That’s what I do wi’ the pups as the lads are allays a-rearing. They will worry and gnaw — worry and gnaw they will, if it was one’s Sunday cap as hung anywhere so as they could drag it. They know no difference, God help ‘em: it’s the pushing o’ the teeth as sets ’em on, that’s what it is.
”
”
George Eliot (Complete Works of George Eliot)
“
Parton’s musical genius deserves a discussion far beyond and above the matters of gender and class. But the lyrics she wrote are forever tied to the body that sang them, her success forever tied to having patterned her look after the “town trollop” of her native holler. For doing so, she received a fame laced with ridicule; during interviews in the 1970s and 1980s, both Barbara Walters and Oprah Winfrey asked her to stand up so they could point out, without humor, that she looked like a tramp.
”
”
Sarah Smarsh (She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs)
“
Yeah, she is—sorry, I can’t lie to you, Andy,” Jane says. “It’s actually for her, the trip.” “Why?” “To help her with the break-up,” she says, as if it’s obvious. “To take her mind off things, cheer her up. Talk it through.” I look at Avi indignantly. “You hear that? She gets a whole weekend.” “I’ve got a whole weekend planned.” He shrugs defensively. “Oh yeah, like what?” “Like…tomorrow. When we’re hung-over. I’ve checked if the local KFC delivers on Uber Eats.” “And?” I demand. “They do.” “We’re doing a hammam and a forest walk,” Jane offers.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
It's weird not being in our subculture of two any more. There was Jen's culture, her little habits and ways of doing things; the collection of stuff she'd already learnt she loved before we met me. Chorizo and Jonathan Franken and long walks and the Eagles (her dad). Seeing the Christmas lights. Taylor Swift, frying pans in the dishwasher, the works absolutely, arsewipe, heaven. Tracy Chapman and prawn jalfrezi and Muriel Spark and HP sauce in bacon sandwiches.
And then there was my culture. Steve Martin and Aston Villa and New York and E.T. Chicken bhuna, strange-looking cats and always having squash or cans of soft drinks in the house. The Cure. Pink Floyd. Kanye West, friend eggs, ten hours' sleep, ketchup in bacon sandwiches. Never missing dental check-ups. Sister Sledge (my mum). Watching TV even if the weather is nice. Cadbury's Caramel. John and Paul and George and Ringo.
And then we met and fell in love and we introduced each other to all of it, like children showing each other their favourite toys. The instinct never goes - look at my fire engine, look at my vinyl collection. Look at all these things I've chosen to represent who I am. It was fun to find out about each other's self-made cultures and make our own hybrid in the years of eating, watching, reading, listening, sleeping and living together. Our culture was tea drink from very large mugs. And looking forward to the Glastonbury ticket day and the new season of Game of Thrones and taking the piss out of ourselves for being just like everyone else. Our culture was over-tipping in restaurants because we both used to work in the service industry, salty popcorn at the cinema and afternoon naps. Side-by-side morning sex. Home-made Manhattans. Barmade Manhattans (much better). Otis Redding's "Cigarettes and Coffee" (our song). Discovering a new song we both loved and listening to it over and over again until we couldn't listen to it any more. Period dramas on a Sunday night. That one perfect vibrator that finished her off in seconds when we were in a rush. Gravy. David Hockney. Truffle crisps. Can you believe it? I still can't believe it. A smell indisputably reminiscent of bums. On a crisp. And yet we couldn't get enough of them together - stuffing them in our gobs, her hand on my chest, me trying not to get crumbs in her hair as we watched Sense and Sensibility (1995).
But I'm not a member of that club anymore. No one is. It's been disbanded, dissolved, the domain is no longer valid. So what do I do with all its stuff? Where so I put it all? Where do I take all my new discoveries now I'm no longer a tribe of two? And if I start a new sub-genre of love with someone else, am I allowed to bring in all the things I loved from the last one? Or would that be weird? Why do I find this so hard?
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
She was the first close friend who I felt like I’d really chosen. We weren’t in each other’s lives because of any obligation to the past or convenience of the present. We had no shared history and we had no reason to spend all our time to gether. But we did. Our friendship intensified as all our friends had children – she, like me, was unconvinced about having kids. And she, like me, found herself in a relationship in her early thirties where they weren’t specifically working towards starting a family.
By the time I was thirty-four, Sarah was my only good friend who hadn’t had a baby. Every time there was another pregnancy announcement from a friend, I’d just text the words ‘And another one!’ and she’d know what I meant.
She became the person I spent most of my free time with other than Andy, because she was the only friend who had any free time. She could meet me for a drink without planning it a month in advance. Our friendship made me feel liberated as well as safe. I looked at her life choices with no sympathy or concern for her. If I could admire her decision to remain child-free, I felt encouraged to admire my own. She made me feel normal. As long as I had our friendship, I wasn’t alone and I had reason to believe I was on the right track.
We arranged to meet for dinner in Soho after work on a Friday. The waiter took our drinks order and I asked for our usual – two Dirty Vodka Martinis.
‘Er, not for me,’ she said. ‘A sparkling water, thank you.’ I was ready to make a joke about her uncharacteristic abstinence, which she sensed, so as soon as the waiter left she said: ‘I’m pregnant.’
I didn’t know what to say. I can’t imagine the expression on my face was particularly enthusiastic, but I couldn’t help it – I was shocked and felt an unwarranted but intense sense of betrayal. In a delayed reaction, I stood up and went to her side of the table to hug her, unable to find words of congratulations. I asked what had made her change her mind and she spoke in vagaries about it ‘just being the right time’ and wouldn’t elaborate any further and give me an answer. And I needed an answer. I needed an answer more than anything that night. I needed to know whether she’d had a realization that I hadn’t and, if so, I wanted to know how to get it.
When I woke up the next day, I realized the feeling I was experiencing was not anger or jealousy or bitterness – it was grief. I had no one left. They’d all gone. Of course, they hadn’t really gone, they were still my friends and I still loved them. But huge parts of them had disappeared and there was nothing they could do to change that. Unless I joined them in their spaces, on their schedules, with their families, I would barely see them.
And I started dreaming of another life, one completely removed from all of it. No more children’s birthday parties, no more christenings, no more barbecues in the suburbs. A life I hadn’t ever seriously contemplated before. I started dreaming of what it would be like to start all over again. Because as long as I was here in the only London I knew – middle-class London, corporate London, mid-thirties London, married London – I was in their world. And I knew there was a whole other world out there.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
He’d never played in Wrigley Field—the Cubs had still been out at old West Side Grounds when he came through as a catcher for the Cardinals before the First World War. But seeing the ballpark in ruins brought the reality of this war home to him like a kick in the teeth. Sometimes big things would do that, sometimes little ones; he remembered a doughboy breaking down and sobbing like a baby when he found some French kid’s dolly with its head blown off. Muldoon’s eyes slid over toward Wrigley for a moment. “Gonna be a long time before the Cubs win another pennant,” he said, as good an epitaph as any for the park—and the city.
”
”
Harry Turtledove (Striking the Balance (Worldwar, #4))
“
The philosopher Leon Kass is among the foremost spokesmen for Shweder’s ethic of divinity, and for the Sanctity foundation on which it is based. Writing in 1997, the year after Dolly the sheep became the first cloned mammal, Kass lamented the way that technology often erases moral boundaries and brings people ever closer to the dangerous belief that they can do anything they want to do. In an essay titled “The Wisdom of Repugnance,” Kass argued that our feelings of disgust can sometimes provide us with a valuable warning that we are going too far, even when we are morally dumbfounded and can’t justify those feelings by pointing to victims:
”
”
Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion)
“
Have you ever asked yourself what kind of story the story of your life is? I always thought mine would be a coming-of-age story. A small-town girl making it in the big city, like Melanie Griffith in Working Girl or Dolly Parton in 9 to 5. Sure, I’d struggle for everything I achieved, but in the end my plucky can-do attitude would ensure I’d triumph over whatever obstacles stood in my way. Like Legally Blonde or Pretty Woman or Pride and Prejudice, the story of my life would be an uplifting comedy, in turns fun and moving and aspirational. I’d be strong and spirited and a riot to be around. I’d be beautiful and smart and kids would love me. That’s what I thought. But now—looking down at the gun in my hands, feeling the heft of it, its cold reality in my palm—I’m not so sure I got the genre right. In fact I’m not even sure I’m the main character anymore.
”
”
Catherine Steadman (The Disappearing Act)
“
When was it that first I heard of the grass harp? Long before the autumn we lived in the China tree; an earlier autumn, then; and of course it was Dolly who told me, no one else would have known to call it that, a grass harp. . .
If on leaving town you take the church road you soon will pass a glaring hill of bonewhite slabs and brown burnt flowers: this is the Baptist cemetery. . . below the hill grows a field of high Indian grass that changes color with the seasons: go to see it in the fall, late September, when it has gone red as sunset, when scarlet shadows light firelight breeze over it and the autumn winds strum on its dry leaves sighing human music, a harp of voices. . .
It must have been on one of those September days when we were there in the woods gathering roots that Dolly said: Do you hear? that is the grass harp, always telling a story -- it knows the stories of all the people on the hill, of all the people who ever lived, and when we are dead it will tell ours, too.
”
”
Truman Capote (The Grass Harp, Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories)
“
As for me, I went inside, walked up to my bedroom, and fell on the floor. What…just happened? Staring at the ceiling, I tried to take it all in. My mind began to race, trying to figure out what it all meant. Do I need to learn how to whittle? Cook fried chicken? Ride a horse? Use a scythe? My face began to feel flushed. And children? Oh, Lord. That means we might have children! What will we name them? Travis and Dolly? Oh my gosh. I have children in my future. I could see it plainly in front of me. They’ll be little redheaded children with green eyes just like mine, and they’ll have lots of freckles, too. I’ll have ten of them, maybe eleven. I’ll have to squat in the garden and give birth while picking my okra. Every stereotype of domestic country life came rushing to the surface. A lot of them involved bearing children.
Then my whole body relaxed in a mushy, contended heap as I remembered all the times I’d walked back into that very room after being with Marlboro Man, my cowboy, my savior. I remembered all the times I’d fallen onto my bed in a fizzy state of euphoria, sighing and smelling my shirt to try to get one last whiff. All the times I’d picked up the phone early in the morning and heard his sexy voice on the other end. All the times I’d longed to see him again, two minutes after he’d dropped me off. This was right, this was oh, so right. If I couldn’t go a day without seeing him, I certainly couldn’t go a lifetime…
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
She leaned over the basket again, taking in the mouthwatering aromas wafting out of it. "Fried chicken? Oh, I'm thinking buttermilk fried chicken?"
Dylan was once again amused. "How do you do that?"
"I like food."
"You don't say."
"And I love Southern fried chicken." She tried to open the basket, and he tapped her hand jokingly.
"Sit," he said.
And she did, crossing her legs and plopping down on the blanket.
Opening the basket and playing waiter, Dylan began removing flatware and plates and red-checkered napkins, and then wrapped food. "For lunch today in Chez Orchard de Pomme, we have some lovely cheese, made from the milk of my buddy Mike's goat Shelia." He removed the plastic wrap, which covered a small log of fresh white cheese on a small plate, and handed it to her.
Grace put her nose to the cheese. It was heavenly. "Oh, Shelia is my new best friend."
"It's good stuff. And we have some fresh chili corn bread. The corn, I think, is from Peter Lindsey's new crop, just cut out from the maze, which is right down this hill." He motioned with his head toward the field, and then he handed her a big loaf of the fresh corn bread wrapped loosely in wax paper.
"It's still warm!" Delighted, she held it to her cheek.
Then he pulled out a large oval Tupperware container. "And, yes, we have Dolly's buttermilk fried chicken."
Grace peeled open the top and smelled. "Fabulous."
"It is!"
He also pulled out a mason jar of sourwood honey, a sack of pecans, and a couple of very cold bottles of a local mountain-brewed beer.
”
”
Jeffrey Stepakoff (The Orchard)
“
It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood. Can we blame the child for resenting the fantasy of largeness? Big, soft arms and deep voices in the dark saying, “Tell Papa, tell Mama, and we’ll make it right.” The child, screaming for refuge, senses how feeble a shelter the twig hut of grown-up awareness is. They claim strength, these parents, and complete sanctuary. The weeping earth itself knows how desperate is the child’s need for exactly that sanctuary. How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia. Grownups can deal with scraped knees, dropped ice-cream cones, and lost dollies, but if they suspected the real reasons we cry they would fling us out of their arms in horrified revulsion. Yet we are small and as terrified as we are terrifying in our ferocious appetites. We need that warm adult stupidity. Even knowing the illusion, we cry and hide in their laps, speaking only of defiled lollipops or lost bears, and getting a lollipop or a toy bear’s worth of comfort. We make do with it rather than face alone the cavernous reaches of our skulls for which there is no remedy, no safety, no comfort at all. We survive until, by sheer stamina, we escape into the dim innocence of our own adulthood and its forgetfulness.
”
”
Katherine Dunn (Geek Love)
“
checked the load, and slipped it under my belt behind my right hip. “Are you supposed to be wearing a bulletproof vest, are you supposed to be carrying a gun?” a guard asked. “Isn’t that against the rules?” “What rules?” I said. He didn’t have an answer for that. I put on my leather coat. The money was still packed in the gym bags, the gym bags strapped to the dolly in the center of my living room. I grabbed the handle and started wheeling it to the back door of my house. I had a remote control hanging from the lock on the window overlooking my unattached garage. I used it to open the garage door. “There’s no reason for you guys to hang around anymore,” I said. The guards followed me out of my back door, across the driveway, and into the garage just the same. They stood by and watched while I loaded the dolly and the gym bags into the trunk of the Audi. “Nice car,” one of them said. If he had offered me ten bucks, I would have sold the Audi and all of its contents to him right then and there. Because he didn’t, I unlocked the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel. “Good luck,” the guard said and closed the door for me. He smiled like I was a patient about to be wheeled into surgery; smiled like he felt sorry for me. I put the key in the ignition, started up the car, depressed the clutch, put the transmission in reverse, and—sat there for five seconds, ten, fifteen … Why are you doing this? my inner voice asked. Are you crazy? The guard watched me through the window, an expression of concern mixed with puzzlement on his face. “McKenzie, are you okay?” he asked. “Never better,” I said. I slowly released the clutch and backed the Audi out of my driveway
”
”
David Housewright (Curse of the Jade Lily (Mac McKenzie, #9))
“
In the last years of the Republic there were films such as Robert Siodmark's Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday, 1930)) and Gerhard Lamprecht's Emil und die Detektive (Emil and the Detectives, 1931), which embraced the airy streets, light-dappled forests, and lakes surrounding Berlin. Billie Wilder, a brash young journalist and dance-hall enthusiast, worked on the scripts for both these films. While Kracauer and Eisner saw malevolence in the frequent trope of doubling (one being possessed by another and thus becoming two conflicting psychological presences), Wilder witnessed another form of doubling during the Weimer era: transvestitism, a staple of cabaret. Men dressing as women (as do Reinhold Schünzel in der Himmel auf Erden [Heaven on earth]) and Curti Bois in Der Fürst von Pappenheim [The Masked Mannequin][both 1927]) or women as men (as does Dolly Haas in Liebeskommando [Love's Command, 1931]), in order to either escape detection or get closer to the object of their affection, is an inherently comic situation, especially when much to his or her surprise the cross-dresser begins to enjoy the disguise.
Billie left Germany before he directed a film of his own; as Billy he brought to Hollywood a vigorous appreciation of such absurdities of human behavior, along with the dry cynicism that distinguished Berlin humor and an enthusiasm for the syncopations of American jazz, a musical phenomenon welcomed in the German capital. Wilder, informed by his years in Berlin (to which he returned to make A Foreign Affair in 1948 and One, Two, Three in 1961), wrote and directed many dark and sophisticated American films, including The Apartment (1969) and Some Like it Hot (1959), a comedy, set during Prohibition, about the gender confusion on a tonal par with Schünzel's Viktor und Viktoria, released in December 1933, eleven months into the Third Reich and the last musical to reflect the insouciance of the late Republic.
”
”
Laurence Kardish (Weimar Cinema 1919-1933: Daydreams and Nightmares)
“
Dear Jon,
A real Dear Jon letter, how perfect is that?! Who knew you’d get dumped twice in the same amount of months. See, I’m one paragraph in and I’ve already fucked this.
I’m writing this because I can’t say any of this to you face-to-face. I’ve spent the last few months questioning a lot of my friendships and wondering what their purpose is, if not to work through big emotional things together. But I now realize: I don’t want that. And I know you’ve all been there for me in other ways. Maybe not in the literal sense, but I know you all would have done anything to fix me other than listening to me talk and allowing me to be sad without solutions. And now I am writing this letter rather than picking up the phone and talking to you because, despite every thing I know, I just don’t want to, and I don’t think you want me to either.
I lost my mind when Jen broke up with me. I’m pretty sure it’s been the subject of a few of your WhatsApp conversations and more power to you, because I would need to vent about me if I’d been friends with me for the last six months. I don’t want it to have been in vain, and I wanted to tell you what I’ve learnt.
If you do a high-fat, high-protein, low-carb diet and join a gym, it will be a good distraction for a while and you will lose fat and gain muscle, but you will run out of steam and eat normally again and put all the weight back on. So maybe don’t bother. Drunkenness is another idea. I was in blackout for most of the first two months and I think that’s fine, it got me through the evenings (and the occasional afternoon). You’ll have to do a lot of it on your own, though, because no one is free to meet up any more. I think that’s fine for a bit. It was for me until someone walked past me drinking from a whisky miniature while I waited for a night bus, put five quid in my hand and told me to keep warm. You’re the only person I’ve ever told this story.
None of your mates will be excited that you’re single again. I’m probably your only single mate and even I’m not that excited. Generally the experience of being single at thirty-five will feel different to any other time you’ve been single and that’s no bad thing.
When your ex moves on, you might become obsessed with the bloke in a way that is almost sexual. Don’t worry, you don’t want to fuck him, even though it will feel a bit like you do sometimes.
If you open up to me or one of the other boys, it will feel good in the moment and then you’ll get an emotional hangover the next day. You’ll wish you could take it all back. You may even feel like we’ve enjoyed seeing you so low. Or that we feel smug because we’re winning at something and you’re losing. Remember that none of us feel that.
You may become obsessed with working out why exactly she broke up with you and you are likely to go fully, fully nuts in your bid to find a satisfying answer. I can save you a lot of time by letting you know that you may well never work it out. And even if you did work it out, what’s the purpose of it? Soon enough, some girl is going to be crazy about you for some undefinable reason and you’re not going to be interested in her for some undefinable reason. It’s all so random and unfair – the people we want to be with don’t want to be with us and the people who want to be with us are not the people we want to be with.
Really, the thing that’s going to hurt a lot is the fact that someone doesn’t want to be with you any more. Feeling the absence of someone’s company and the absence of their love are two different things. I wish I’d known that earlier. I wish I’d known that it isn’t anybody’s job to stay in a relationship they don’t want to be in just so someone else doesn’t feel bad about themselves.
Anyway. That’s all. You’re going to be okay, mate.
Andy
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
The failed launch left many SpaceX employees shattered. “It was so profound seeing the energy shift over the room in the course of thirty seconds,” said Dolly Singh, a recruiter at SpaceX. “It was like the worst fucking day ever. You don’t usually see grown-ups weeping, but there they were. We were tired and broken emotionally.” Musk addressed the workers right away and encouraged them to get back to work. “He said, ‘Look. We are going to do this. It’s going to be okay. Don’t freak out,’” Singh recalled. “It was like magic. Everyone chilled out immediately and started to focus on figuring out what just happened and how to fix it. It went from despair to hope and focus.
”
”
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: Inventing the Future)
“
She likes a quote by Dolly Parton: “Decide who you are, and then do it on purpose.
”
”
Bobby Hutchinson (Special Education)
“
I support Dolly Sisters, sir. Always have done."
"And are they any good?"
"Having a poor patch at the moment, sir."
"Ah, then I expect you will want to support our team, which will be very good indeed!"
"Can't do that, sir. You've got to support your team, sir."
"but you just said that they weren't doing well."
"That's when you support your team, sir. Otherwise you're a numper."
"A numper being...?" said Ridcully.
"He's someone who's all cheering when things are going well, and then runs off to another team when there's a losing streak. They always shouts the loudest.
”
”
Terry Pratchett
“
Reprogramming is what John Gurdon demonstrated in his ground-breaking work when he transferred the nuclei from adult toads into toad eggs. It’s what happened when Keith Campbell and Ian Wilmut cloned Dolly the Sheep by putting the nucleus from a mammary gland cell into an egg. It’s what Yamanaka achieved when he treated somatic cells with four key genes, all of which code for proteins highly expressed naturally during this reprogramming phase. The egg is a wonderful thing, honed through hundreds of millions of years of evolution to be extraordinarily effective at generating vast quantities of epigenetic change, across billions of base-pairs. None of the artificial means of reprogramming cells comes close to the natural process in terms of speed or efficiency. But the egg probably doesn’t quite do everything unaided. At the very least, the pattern of epigenetic modifications in sperm is one that allows the male pronucleus to be reprogrammed relatively easily. The sperm epigenome is primed to be reprogrammed6. Unfortunately, these priming chromatin modifications (and many other features of the sperm nucleus), are missing if an adult nucleus is reprogrammed by transferring it into a fertilised egg. That’s also true when an adult nucleus is reprogrammed by treating it with the four Yamanaka factors to create iPS cells. In both these circumstances, it’s a real challenge to completely reset the epigenome of the adult nucleus. It’s just too big a task. This is probably why so many cloned animals have abnormalities and shortened lifespans. The defects that are seen in these cloned animals are another demonstration that if early epigenetic modifications go wrong, they may stay wrong for life. The abnormal epigenetic modification patterns result in permanently inappropriate gene expression, and long-term ill-health.
”
”
Nessa Carey (The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance)
“
Loving America is the most American of things to do. Why does loving America preclude an honest understanding of our history and its influence in our lives?
”
”
Dolly Chugh (The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias)
“
One evening, as I carefully prepared my dollies for bed with their silky pajamas and pin curls, my mom literally threw a red book at me from across the room with a 'Here. Read this. Let me know if you have any questions.' It took me half a day to get through, and afterward, oh, did I have questions. The book contained the most explicit descriptions of every sexual proclivity in existence - I had a lot of questions:
'Is it the man that pees on the woman or the woman that pees on the man?'
'What if you forget your safe word?'
'Do we have any shlurp bars in Toronto?'
'What's your safe word?'
'What if you go to shrimp someone and they haven't washed their feet?'
'What should my safe word be? Is alphabet soup to obvious?'
Soon, not only was I familiar with the basics of male-female sexual intercourse, I could explain in great detail what bukkake was. I could give you a rundown on a Cincinnati Bowtie, or perhaps even take you through the intricacies of a German Scheisse video.
”
”
Samantha Bee (I Know I Am, But What Are You?)
“
On the afternoon of her birthday, she went to another tattoo parlor to amend her error from a decade ago. She had the stars filled in with dark ink; she painted it black. She put an “F” next to one of them for Florence and a “D” for me. A reminder that no matter what we lose, no matter how uncertain and unpredictable life gets, some people really do walk next to you forever.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir)
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Muito do amor que sentimos por uma pessoa depende do vasto arquivo de memórias partilhadas a que acedemos só por olhar para o seu rosto ou ouvir-lhe a voz.
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Dolly Alderton (Ghosts)
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You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try. —Dolly Parton
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Mary Frame (Ridorkulous (Dorky Duet #1))
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Monthaversary dinner. How did these women do it? What was their secret?... Was it that they simply told them what to do and when to do it, and the imposed restriction of choice made their boyfriends feel safely shepherded rather than ready for slaughter? Had I been treating men too much like adults and not enough like little directionless lambs?
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Dolly Alderton (Ghosts)
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What do you think of our babysitter?’ Dolly asks, adjusting a garter. ‘Oh, I hardly noticed,’ he says. ‘Cute girl. She seems to get along fine with the kids. Why?
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Robert Coover (The Babysitter)
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But I feel content; grateful for every morning that I wake up with another day on this earth and another chance to do good and feel good and make others feel good too.
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Dolly Alderton
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Good morning to Karen’s fertile and barren friends. I thought I’d send over the plan for the completely unnecessary, mawkish, and expensive non-tradition borrowed from America that is our friend Karen’s baby shower. Karen thinks it’s always good to demand money and time from people to celebrate her own personal life choices and we felt you haven’t given her quite enough in recent history, what, with the $1500 pound hen do in Ibiza, wedding in Majorca with a strict dress code, and gift registry at Selfridges. (NB: ladies-- if you get a new job or buy or flat on your own, you get a card and that’s it! We want to make sure there’s no prprecedent set. We’re not made of money!!)
The good news is, after Karen gives birth she won’t see any of her childless friends unless all they want to do is talk about her baby and nothing else. So you can treat this as her farewell party as well as her baby shower. And save those pennies for a couple of years, that is of course until she comes back to you when she’s stopped breast feeding and is bored out of her mind, demands you all go out to drink, dance, and take loads of drugs, then sends you an offish text the following week saying she can’t really have a night out like that again because “I’M A MOTHER NOW.
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Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love)
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Pinch that little cheek of yours,’ he said as if he’d known me for years.
‘You don’t need someone else to tell you what to do or who to be. You’re your own mother now. You have to listen to what you want.’
‘Hmm,’ I managed again.
‘And for every day for the rest of your life, I want you to take that job seriously.
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Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love)