Dorothy Quotes

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

Résumé Razors pain you, Rivers are damp, Acids stain you, And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful, Nooses give, Gas smells awful. You might as well live.

The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.

By the time you swear you're his, Shivering and sighing. And he vows his passion is, Infinite, undying. Lady make note of this -- One of you is lying.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.

In youth, it was a way I had, To do my best to please. And change, with every passing lad To suit his theories. But now I know the things I know And do the things I do, And if you do not like me so, To hell, my love, with you.

Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

I hate writing, I love having written.

Don't look at me in that tone of voice.

I like to have a martini, Two at the very most. After three I'm under the table, after four I'm under my host.

Tell him I was too fucking busy-- or vice versa.

I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.

Facts are like cows. If you look them in the face long enough, they generally run away.

Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.

What fresh hell is this?

Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.

They sicken of the calm who know the storm.

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.

You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

If I didn't care for fun and such, I'd probably amount to much. But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn.

This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it." [Women Know Everything!]

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.

That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them.

Inventory: "Four be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. Three be the things I shall have till I die: Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

And if my heart be scarred and burned, The safer, I, for all I learned.

If wild my breast and sore my pride, I bask in dreams of suicide, If cool my heart and high my head I think 'How lucky are the dead.

She was pleased to have him come and never sorry to see him go.

Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.

Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.

You have some queer friends, Dorothy,' she said. The queerness doesn't matter, so long as they're friends,' was the answer

So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.'" Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, 'fug,' in his 1948 book, "The Naked and the Dead.

Life is ten percent what you experience and ninety percent how you respond to it.

Now I know the things I know, and I do the things I do; and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you!

If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.

If we walk far enough," says Dorothy, "we shall sometime come to someplace.

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.

It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.

Ducking for apples -- change one letter and it's the story of my life.

There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.

Time doth flit; oh shit.

Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)

I won't telephone him. I'll never telephone him again as long as I live. He'll rot in hell, before I'll call him up. You don't have to give me strength, God; I have it myself. If he wanted me, he could get me. He knows where I am. He knows I'm waiting here. He's so sure of me, so sure. I wonder why they hate you, as soon as they are sure of you.

It's true. It's like the hidden secret that no one tells you. we can all be beautiful girls, Colie. it's so easy. it's like Dorothy clicking her heels to go home. You could do it all along.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

I think you are a very bad man," said Dorothy. "Oh, no, my dear; I'm really a very good man, but I'm a very bad Wizard, I must admit.

I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.

Money cannot buy health, but I'd settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.

Toto did not really care whether he was in Kansas or the Land of Oz so long as Dorothy was with him; but he knew the little girl was unhappy, and that made him unhappy too.

Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?" "So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober.

Books... are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.

Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away.

But I don't give up; I forget why not.

The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?

Women and elephants never forget.

I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me. I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.

I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money.

You think You're frightening me with Your hell, don't You? You think Your hell is worse than mine.

Share too much and someone can hurt you.

If television's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who won't shut up.

Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.

Q: What's the difference between an enzyme and a hormone? A: You can't hear an enzyme.

The sun's gone dim, and the moon's gone black. For I loved him, and he didn't love back.

A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.

Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.

His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets.

Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.

Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night.

I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.

I didn’t know what was worse: to have your shot and screw it up, or to never have had a shot in the first place.

I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours.

There was nothing separate about her days. Like drops on the window-pane, they ran together and trickled away.

For throughout history, you can read the stories of women who - against all the odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled or ruined, because all around them, society was still wrong. Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc - and you also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed.

You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.

Some people's blameless lives are to blame for a good deal.

Of course I talk to myself. I like a good speaker, and I appreciate an intelligent audience.

I was living in a world little Dorothy from Kansas could never have imagined or expected

If you want to know what God thinks about money just look at the people He gives it to.

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, a medley of extemporanea, And love is a thing that can never go wrong, and I am Marie of Romania.

I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives' tales about the way men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock around a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I had never seen this happen." [From a column dated November 17, 1928]

I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, I'm a drinker with a writing problem.

If it’s the next storm, perhaps it’s going the other way.” “Goddess, I hope so,” said Dorothy, grimacing at her tea.


She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.

If all the girls attending [the Yale prom] were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Living well is the best revenge.

Don't worry about being effective. Just concentrate on being faithful to the truth.

Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.

Hi," Kami said to Dorothy, the head librarian…"Can you tell me where I could find the books on Satanism?" Twenty minutes later, she had Dorothy convinced that it was for a school project, and she really did not have to telephone Kami's parents.

If I had a shiny gun I could have a world of fun Speeding bullets through the brains Of the folks that cause me pains :)

The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'check enclosed.

Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.

Some men break your heart in two, Some men fawn and flatter, Some men never look at you; And that cleans up the matter.

Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.

What are you to do with the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?

London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.

Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat.

Where's the man that could ease a heart like a satin gown?

[On Oscar Wilde:] "If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it. [Life Magazine, June 2, 1927]

He lingered at the door, and said, 'The Lion wants courage, the Tin Man a heart, and the Scarecrow brains. Dorothy wants to go home. What do you want?'... She couldn't say forgiveness, not to Liir. She started to say 'a soldier,' to make fun of his mooning affections over the guys in uniform. But realizing even as she said it that he would be hurt, she caught herself halfway, and in the end what came out of her mouth surprised them both. She said, 'A soul-' He blinked at her.

Sometimes only pain can heal.

I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.

The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.

Her mind lives tidily, apart from cold and noise and pain. And bolts the door against her heart, out wailing in the rain.

When I was young and bold and strong, The right was right, the wrong was wrong. With plume on high and flag unfurled, I rode away to right the world. But now I’m old - and good and bad, Are woven in a crazy plaid. I sit and say the world is so, And wise is s/he who lets it go.

A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.

Far too many people opened their hearts and lives at the drop of a hat. Why give someone that power over you? Why endow them with the ability to hurt you that much? Let someone in and you were asking for an emotional kicking some day.

Woman wants monogamy; Man delights in novelty. Love is woman's moon and sun; Man has other forms of fun. Woman lives but in her lord; Count to ten, and man is bored. With this the gist and sum of it, What earthly good can come of it?

I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.

It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the messes.

I shudder at the thought of men.... I'm due to fall in love again

In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair...the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.

Her big heart did not, as is so sadly often the case, inhabit a big bosom.

Symptom Recital I do not like my state of mind; I'm bitter, querulous, unkind. I hate my legs, I hate my hands, I do not yearn for lovelier lands. I dread the dawn's recurrent light; I hate to go to bed at night. I snoot at simple, earnest folk. I cannot take the gentlest joke. I find no peace in paint or type. My world is but a lot of tripe. I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted. For what I think, I'd be arrested. I am not sick, I am not well. My quondam dreams are shot to hell. My soul is crushed, my spirit sore; I do not like me any more. I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse. I ponder on the narrow house. I shudder at the thought of men.... I'm due to fall in love again.

Sometimes I think I'll give up trying, and just go completely Russian and sit on a stove and moan all day.

Be brave. Be angry. Don't trust anyone.

There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.

Even idiots ocasionally speak the truth accidentally.

Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation.

Men They hail you as their morning star Because you are the way you are. If you return the sentiment, They'll try to make you different; And once they have you, safe and sound, They want to change you all around. Your moods and ways they put a curse on; They'd make of you another person. They cannot let you go your gait; They influence and educate. They'd alter all that they admired. They make me sick, they make me tired.

You will know your vocation by the joy that it brings you. You will know. You will know when it's right.

All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.

There's little in taking or giving There's little in water or wine This living, this living , this living was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is the gain of the one at the top for art is a form of catharsis and love is a permanent flop and work is the province of cattle and rest's for a clam in a shell so I'm thinking of throwing the battle would you kindly direct me to hell?

And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.

Do you know how to pick a lock?' 'Not in the least, I'm afraid.' 'I often wonder what we go to school for,' said Wimsey.

Be you wise and never sad, You will get your lovely lad. Never serious be, nor true, And your wish will come to you-- And if that makes you happy, kid, You'll be the first it ever did.

Lady, lady, never start Conversation toward your heart; Keep your pretty words serene; Never murmur what you mean. Show yourself, by word and look, Swift and shallow as a brook. Be as cool and quick to go As a drop of April snow; Be as delicate and gay As a cherry flower in May. Lady, lady, never speak Of the tears that burn your cheek- She will never win him, whose Words had shown she feared to lose. Be you wise and never sad, You will get your lovely lad. Never serious be, nor true, And your wish will come to you- And if that makes you happy, kid, You'll be the first it ever did.

For God's sake, let's take the word 'possess' and put a brick round its neck and drown it ... We can't possess one another. We can only give and hazard all we have.

I never see that prettiest thing- A cherry bough gone white with Spring- But what I think, "How gay 'twould be To hang me from a flowering tree.

You don’t need wheels on your house to get somewhere better. All you need is something to give you that extra push.

The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it.

I wish to God,” said Gideon with mild exasperation, “that you’d talk—just once—in prose like other people.

My strength returns to me with my cup of coffee and the reading of the psalms.

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.

Those who cannot see Christ in the poor are atheists indeed.

It turns out that, at social gatherings, as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, I rank somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice-skate.

We are much too much inclined in these days to divide people into permanent categories, forgetting that a category only exists for its special purpose and must be forgotten as soon as that purpose is served.

Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within. The heavier the lashing of the rain and the ghastlier the details, the better the flavour seems to be.

Oh, seek, my love, your newer way; I'll not be left in sorrow. So long as I have yesterday, Go take your damned tomorrow!

I hate to break it to you, but just because someone has pretty hair and a good skin tone and a crown instead of a pointy hat doesn’t mean she’s not the baddest bitch this side of the emerald city.

The only “ism” Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.

If it ever occurs to people to value the honour of the mind equally with the honour of the body, we shall get a social revolution of a quite unparalleled sort.

I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with.

Those who have sacrificed always have the most to lose.

Authors and actors and artists and such - Never know nothing, and never know much.

If I don't drive around the park, I'm pretty sure to make my mark. If I'm in bed each night by ten, I may get back my looks again, If I abstain from fun and such, I'll probably amount to much, But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn…

Never complain, never explain.

Mrs. Ewing was a short woman who accepted the obligation borne by so many short women to make up in vivacity what they lack in number of inches from the ground.

What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: "You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls"; if the answer is, "But I don't," there is no more to be said.

No matter how tough you think you are, there are certain things that just get to you, and they’re usually the little things. The ones you don’t expect.

The rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed ... or find a still greater man to marry her. ... The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women; indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a woman of no sort of greatness at all.

The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core. Scratch a lover and find a foe.

When you can't be honest with people, you can't ever relax with them.

I'll be the way I was when I first met him. Then maybe he'll like me again. I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.

All I have to be thankful for in this world is that I was sitting down when my garter busted.

Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.

I wish, I wish I were a poisonous bacterium.

Why is it no one sent me yet one perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it's always just my luck to get one perfect rose.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form.

The cure to boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity.

The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people begin to believe that the security of their families and communities depends on the oppression of others, that for some to have good lives there must be others whose lives are truncated and brutal.

Excuse my dust.

[W]hen I see men callously and cheerfully denying women the full use of their bodies, while insisting with sobs and howls on the satisfaction of their own, I simply can't find it heroic, or kind, or anything but pretty rotten and feeble.

Salary is no object: I want only enough to keep body and soul apart.

Trapped like a trap in a trap

We must talk about poverty, because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it.

In fact, there is perhaps only one human being in a thousand who is passionately interested in his job for the job's sake. The difference is that if that one person in a thousand is a man, we say, simply, that he is passionately keen on his job; if she is a woman, we say she is a freak.

Still, it doesn't do to murder people, no matter how offensive they may be.

Prince or commoner, tenor or bass, Painter or plumber or never-do-well, Do me a favor and shut your face - Poets alone should kiss and tell.

I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them.

If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.

We've got to laugh or break our hearts in this damnable world.

The older I get, the more I meet people, the more convinced I am that we must only work on ourselves, to grow in grace. The only thing we can do about people is to love them.

Travel, trouble, music, art, a kiss, a frock, a rhyme -- I never said they feed my heart, but still they pass my time.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I would rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.

He'll be cross if he sees I have been crying. They don't like you to cry. He doesn't cry. I wish to God I could make him cry. I wish I could make him cry and tread the floor and feel his heart heavy and big and festering in him. I wish I could hurt him like hell. He doesn't wish that about me. I don't think he even knows how he makes me feel. I wish he could know, without my telling him. They don't like you to tell them they've made you cry. They don't like you to tell them you're unhappy because of them. If you do, they think you're possessive and exacting. And then they hate you. They hate you whenever you say anything you really think. You always have to keep playing little games. Oh, I thought we didn't have to; I thought this was so big I could say whatever I meant. I guess you can't, ever. I guess there isn't ever anything big enough for that.

Now, look, baby, 'Union' is spelled with 5 letters. It is not a four-letter word.

I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself.

Once, when I was young and true. Someone left me sad - Broke my brittle heart in two; And that is very bad. Love is for unlucky folk, Love is but a curse. Once there was a heart I broke; And that, I think, is worse.

People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.

In reaction against the age-old slogan, "woman is the weaker vessel," or the still more offensive, "woman is a divine creature," we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that "a woman is as good as a man," without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz: (...) that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.

Behind the story I tell is the one I don't. Behind the story you hear is the one I wish I could make you hear. Behind my carefully buttoned collar is my nakedness, the struggle to find clean clothes, food, meaning, and money. Behind sex is rage, behind anger is love, behind this moment is silence, years of silence.

There must be courage; there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism. There must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind...There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it.

Daily dawns another day; I must up, to make my way. Though I dress and drink and eat, Move my fingers and my feet, Learn a little, here and there, Weep and laugh and sweat and swear, Hear a song, or watch a stage, Leave some words upon a page, Claim a foe, or hail a friend- Bed awaits me at the end.

The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told all the time. If we do not penalize false statements made in error, we open up the way for false statements by intention. And a false statement of fact, made deliberately, is the most serious crime a scientist can commit.

It is extraordinarily entertaining to watch the historians of the past ... entangling themselves in what they were pleased to call the "problem" of Queen Elizabeth. They invented the most complicated and astonishing reasons both for her success as a sovereign and for her tortuous matrimonial policy. She was the tool of Burleigh, she was the tool of Leicester, she was the fool of Essex; she was diseased, she was deformed, she was a man in disguise. She was a mystery, and must have some extraordinary solution. Only recently has it occrurred to a few enlightened people that the solution might be quite simple after all. She might be one of the rare people were born into the right job and put that job first.

Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man - there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as "The women, God help us!" or "The ladies, God bless them!"; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything "funny" about woman's nature.

Shepley walked out of his bedroom pulling a T-shirt over his head. His eyebrows pushed together. “Did they just leave?” “Yeah,” I said absently, rinsing my cereal bowl and dumping Abby’s leftover oatmeal in the sink. She’d barely touched it. “Well, what the hell? Mare didn’t even say goodbye.” “You knew she was going to class. Quit being a cry baby.” Shepley pointed to his chest. “I’m the cry baby? Do you remember last night?” “Shut up.” “That’s what I thought.” He sat on the couch and slipped on his sneakers. “Did you ask Abby about her birthday?” “She didn’t say much, except that she’s not into birthdays.” “So what are we doing?” “Throwing her a party.” Shepley nodded, waiting for me to explain. “I thought we’d surprise her. Invite some of our friends over and have America take her out for a while.” Shepley put on his white ball cap, pulling it down so low over his brows I couldn’t see his eyes. “She can manage that. Anything else?” “How do you feel about a puppy?” Shepley laughed once. “It’s not my birthday, bro.” I walked around the breakfast bar and leaned my hip against the stool. “I know, but she lives in the dorms. She can’t have a puppy.” “Keep it here? Seriously? What are we going to do with a dog?” “I found a Cairn Terrier online. It’s perfect.” “A what?” “Pidge is from Kansas. It’s the same kind of dog Dorothy had in the Wizard of Oz.” Shepley’s face was blank. “The Wizard of Oz.” “What? I liked the scarecrow when I was a little kid, shut the fuck up.” “It’s going to crap every where, Travis. It’ll bark and whine and … I don’t know.” “So does America … minus the crapping.” Shepley wasn’t amused. “I’ll take it out and clean up after it. I’ll keep it in my room. You won’t even know it’s here.” “You can’t keep it from barking.” “Think about it. You gotta admit it’ll win her over.” Shepley smiled. “Is that what this is all about? You’re trying to win over Abby?” My brows pulled together. “Quit it.” His smile widened. “You can get the damn dog…” I grinned with victory. “…if you admit you have feelings for Abby.” I frowned in defeat. “C’mon, man!” “Admit it,” Shepley said, crossing his arms. What a tool. He was actually going to make me say it. I looked to the floor, and everywhere else except Shepley’s smug ass smile. I fought it for a while, but the puppy was fucking brilliant. Abby would flip out (in a good way for once), and I could keep it at the apartment. She’d want to be there every day. “I like her,” I said through my teeth. Shepley held his hand to his ear. “What? I couldn’t quite hear you.” “You’re an asshole! Did you hear that?” Shepley crossed his arms. “Say it.” “I like her, okay?” “Not good enough.” “I have feelings for her. I care about her. A lot. I can’t stand it when she’s not around. Happy?” “For now,” he said, grabbing his backpack off the floor.

What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.

So Oz finally became home; the imagined world became the actual world, as it does for us all, because the truth is that once we have left our childhood places and started out to make our own lives, armed only with what we have and are, we understand that the real secret of the ruby slippers is not that "there's no place like home," but rather that there is no longer such a place as home: except, of course, for the homes we make, or the homes that are made for us, in Oz, which is anywhere and everywhere, except the place from which we began. In the place from which I began, after all, I watched the film from the child's - Dorothy's point of view. I experienced, with her, the frustration of being brushed aside by Uncle Henry and Auntie Em, busy with their dull grown-up counting. Like all adults, they couldn't focus on what was really important to Dorothy: namely, the threat to Toto. I ran away with Dorothy and then ran back. Even the shock of discovering that the Wizard was a humbug was a shock I felt as a child, a shock to the child's faith in adults. Perhaps, too, I felt something deeper, something I couldn't articulate; perhaps some half-formed suspicion about grown-ups was being confirmed. Now, as I look at the movie again, I have become the fallible adult. Now I am a member of the tribe of imperfect parents who cannot listen to their children's voices. I, who no longer have a father, have become a father instead, and now it is my fate to be unable to satisfy the longings of a child. This is the last and most terrible lesson of the film: that there is one final, unexpected rite of passage. In the end, ceasing to be children, we all become magicians without magic, exposed conjurers, with only our simply humanity to get us through. We are the humbugs now.

Why do you want a letter from me? Why don't you take the trouble to find out for yourselves what Christianity is? You take time to learn technical terms about electricity. Why don't you do as much for theology? Why do you never read the great writings on the subject, but take your information from the secular 'experts' who have picked it up as inaccurately as you? Why don't you learn the facts in this field as honestly as your own field? Why do you accept mildewed old heresies as the language of the church, when any handbook on church history will tell you where they came from? Why do you balk at the doctrine of the Trinity - God the three in One - yet meekly acquiesce when Einstein tells you E=mc2? What makes you suppose that the expression "God ordains" is narrow and bigoted, while your own expression, "Science demands" is taken as an objective statement of fact? You would be ashamed to know as little about internal combustion as you know about Christian beliefs. I admit, you can practice Christianity without knowing much theology, just as you can drive a car without knowing much about internal combustion. But when something breaks down in the car, you go humbly to the man who understands the works; whereas if something goes wrong with religion, you merely throw the works away and tell the theologian he is a liar. Why do you want a letter from me telling you about God? You will never bother to check on it or find out whether I'm giving you personal opinions or Christian doctrines. Don't bother. Go away and do some work and let me get on with mine.