“
I think that the most important thing a woman can have- next to talent, of course- is her hairdresser.
”
”
Joan Crawford
“
Even geniuses could get things wrong-look at Einstein's unfortunate choice of a hairdresser.
”
”
Joss Stirling (Stealing Phoenix (Benedicts, #2))
“
My English teacher has no face. She has uncombed stringy hair that droops on her shoulders. The hair is black from her part to her ears and then neon orange to the frizzy ends. I can't decide if she had pissed off her hairdresser or is morphing into a monarch butterfly. I call her Hairwoman.
”
”
Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)
“
I need some beef and broccoli before I face any more Mr. Darcy. It's a truth universally acknowledged that if you watch too much television on am empty stomach, your head falls off."
"If your head fall off, " Tessa said, "the hairdressing industry would go into an economic meltdown
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Last Stand of the New York Institute (The Bane Chronicles, #9))
“
Women always think that when they have my shoes, my dress my hairdresser, my make-up, it will work the same way. They do not conceive of the witchcraft that is needed. They do not know that I am not beautiful but that I only appear to be at certain moments.
”
”
Anaïs Nin (Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932)
“
What is it about hairdressers? You tell them 'not too short' and some part of their hairdresser brain hears this as 'whack the shit out of it.' If you never say, 'not too short,' everything is fine. You say it, & it's a guarantee you'll come out ready for the military>
”
”
Deb Caletti (The Six Rules of Maybe)
“
Was this how it worked, then, successful social integration? Was it really that simple? Wear some lipstick, go to the hairdressers and alternate the clothes you wear?
”
”
Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
“
Recalling his first impression of Hitler, Hanfstaengl wrote, "Hitler looked like a suburban hairdresser on his day off.
”
”
Erik Larson (In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin)
“
You don't have to be a doctor to know when a relationship is not healthy.
”
”
Jodyne L. Speyer (Dump 'Em: How to Break Up with Anyone from Your Best Friend to Your Hairdresser)
“
How inexplicable it seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange.
”
”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh (Gift from the Sea)
“
Not much call for a barbarian hairdresser, I expect,' said Rincewind. 'I mean, no-one wants a shampoo-and-beheading.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Sourcery (Discworld, #5; Rincewind, #3))
“
I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.
”
”
Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I: the Original Screenplay)
“
There's no doubt about what the man's profession has been. He's a retired hairdresser. Look at that moustache of his.
”
”
Agatha Christie (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Hercule Poirot, #4))
“
I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?'
" 'The way I want it?'
" 'Yeah. The way you want it. Don't you want it to be something more than what it is?'
" 'What'st eh point? I can't change it.'
" 'That's the point. If you don't, it will change you and it'll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life.'
" 'Mess it up how?'
" 'Forgot it.'
" 'Forgot?'
" 'Forgot it was mine. My life. I just ran up and down the streets wishing I was somebody else.
”
”
Toni Morrison (Jazz (Beloved Trilogy, #2))
“
Dad. I love that you aren’t afraid to carry around romance novels with almost-naked men on the cover and hand them out as “tips” to waitresses, hairdressers, and anyone else you come across. Thanks for being one of my biggest fans.
”
”
Susan Stoker (Protecting Fiona (SEAL of Protection, #3))
“
Finally," Magnus said, grabbing a ten-dollar bill from a table near the door, and he buzzed the delivery man in. "I need some beef and broccoli before I face any more Mr. Darcy. It's a truth universally acknowledged that if you watch too much television on an empty stomach, your head falls off."
"If your head fell off," Tessa said, "the hairdressing industry would go into an economic meltdown.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Bane Chronicles)
“
I think the most important thing a woman can have - next to talent, of course, - is her hairdresser.
”
”
Joan Crawford
“
Before I got off the bus, I made an internal list of people who could touch my hair:
1. Me
2. A hairdresser
3. That's it, that's the whole list
”
”
Candice Carty-Williams (Queenie)
“
In my world, reserved Italians, heterosexual hairdressers, clouds without silver linings, ignoble savages, hard-hearted whores, advantageous ill-winds, sober Irishmen, and so on, are not permitted to exist.
”
”
Martin Amis (The Rachel Papers)
“
If one sets aside time
for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement or a shopping expedition,
that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone,
one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being
alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one
practices it—like a secret vice!
”
”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh (Gift from the Sea)
“
There have been times when I felt that I might die of loneliness. People sometimes say they might die of boredom, that they're dying for a cup of tea, but for me, dying of loneliness is not a hyperbole. When I feel like that, my head drops and my shoulders slump and I ache, I physically ache, for human contact - I truly feel that I might tumble to the ground and pass away if someone doesn't hold me, touch me. I don't mean a lover - this recent madness aside, I had long since given up on any notion that another person might love me that way - but simply a human being. The scalp massage at the hairdresser, the flu jab I had last winter - the only time I experience touch is from people whom I am paying, and they are almost wearing disposable gloves at the time. I'm merely stating the facts.
”
”
Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
“
The 'medium' is unaware of its attractiveness, that's all. Everyone loves comics. I've proven this to my own satisfaction by handing them out to acountants, insurance brokers, hairdressers, mothers of children, black belts, pop stars, taxi drivers, painters, lesbians, doctors etc. etc. The X-Files, Buffy, the Matrix, X-Men - mainstream culture is not what it once was when science fiction and comics fans huddled in cellars like Gnostic Christians dodging the Romans. We should come up into the light soon before we suffocate.
”
”
Grant Morrison
“
I steeled myself as best I could, and, with teeth gritted, using only one finger I typed:
C U there E.
I sat back, feeling a bit queasy. Illiterate communication was quicker, that was true, but not by much. I'd saved myself the trouble of typing four whole characters. Still, it was part of my new credo, trying new things. I'd tried it, and I very definitely did not like it. LOL could go and take a running jump. I wasn't made for illiteracy; it simply didn't come naturally. Although it's good to try new things and to keep an open mind, it's also extremely important to stay true to who you really are. I read that in a magazine at the hairdressers.
”
”
Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
“
Men don’t take rejection so well. It’s like they’re raised expecting that they can have whatever they want.
”
”
Tendai Huchu (The Hairdresser of Harare)
“
Was this how it worked, then, successful social integration? Was it really that simple? Wear some lipstick, go to the hairdressers and alternate the clothes you wear? Someone ought to write a book, or at least an explanatory pamphlet, and pass this information on.
”
”
Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
“
Wind is the most skilled hairdresser! Find a windy weather and let your hair be shaped creatively!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
Make-up artists should hereby get the Nobel prize for adding to human happiness. And so should hairdressers. And so should Luke.
”
”
Sophie Kinsella (Shopaholic & Baby (Shopaholic, #5))
“
I can only say that friendship should rise above man-made laws, which tend to be capricious by their very nature.
”
”
Tendai Huchu (The Hairdresser of Harare)
“
It’s difficult to stop loving someone, even when they have done something that you once thought unforgivable. There isn’t an on off switch for love.
”
”
Tendai Huchu (The Hairdresser of Harare)
“
I’m a nice person. I give money to starving babies and properly tip my hairdresser. Why am I the one everyone tries to kill?
”
”
Sophie Oak (Siren Beloved (Texas Sirens, #4))
“
One of my favorite quotes is from a local hairdresser who went off to live in Rome. Lucky guy. Anyway, he used to sign off his TV program each day by saying: Live it up, girls. You're dead a long time. Good advice I thought.
”
”
Susan Johnson
“
(This was long after hairdressers; in truth, ever since there have been women, there have been hairdressers, Adam being the first, though the King James scholars do their very best to muddy this point.)
”
”
William Goldman (The Princess Bride)
“
You're a model? Never would have guessed," Jonah said in a lazy, teasing voice that caused Hamilton's head to swivel. He'd never seen Jonah flirt before.
The girl tilted her head. The glossy hair spilled down one bare shoulder. "Un moment...you look familiar."
Jonah grinned. "Yeah?"
"'Ave we met? Are you an 'airdresser?"
"A hairdresser?" Jonah choked out.
"Guys, we'd better get going," Hamilton said.
"The name is Jonah," Jonah said, pronuncing his name carefully. He waited for a sign of recognition.
"Nicole."
"Jonah Wizard."
Nicole squinted at him. "You are a wee-zhard? Like the Harry Potter, non?"
"I'm Hamilton," Hamilton said, even though nobody asked.
”
”
Jude Watson (A King's Ransom (The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers, #2))
“
Although it’s good to try new things and to keep an open mind, it’s also extremely important to stay true to who you really are. I read that in a magazine at the hairdressers.
”
”
Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
“
Why is your hair green?”
“It’s a fashion statement.”
“It’s hideous. And even if it weren’t . . . tinted . . . or whatever you did to it, it still wouldn’t do. We haven’t had a blond Pythia before; it’s simply not what people expect to see. And, frankly, it doesn’t suit you.”
“It’s my natural color!”
“Then it’s naturally hideous. And this”—he tugged at my curls—“will have to go.”
“If you touch me one more time—” I said softly.
“I’ll make you an appointment with a hairdresser who understands that we need suave. We need sophisticated. We need—well, someone else, obviously, but—
”
”
Karen Chance (Hunt the Moon (Cassandra Palmer, #5))
“
The warm bittersweet smell of clean Negro welcomed us as we entered the churchyard-Hearts of Love hairdressing mingled with asafoetida, snuff, Hoyt's Cologne, Brown's Mule, peppermint, and lilac talcum.
”
”
Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)
“
The world today does not understand, in either man or woman, the need to be alone. How inexplicable it seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement, or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical, or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it--like a secret vice!
”
”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh (Gift from the Sea)
“
Nonetheless, when it finally ended and the hairdressers left and Tess insisted upon pulling her to the mirror, Fire saw, and understood, that everyone had done the job well. The dress, deep shimmering purple and utterly simple in design, was so beautifully-cut and so clingy and well-fitting that Fire felt slightly naked. And her hair. She couldn’t follow what they’d done with her hair, braids thin as threads in some places, looped and wound through the thick sections that fell over her shoulders and down her back, but she saw that the end result was a controlled wildness that was magnificent against her face, her body, and the dress. She turned to measure the effect on her guard - all twenty of them, for all had roles to play in tonight’s proceedings, and all were awaiting her orders. Twenty jaws hung slack with astonishment - even Musa’s, Mila’s, and Neel’s. Fire touched their minds, and was pleased, and then angry, to find them open as the glass roofs in July.
‘Take hold of yourselves,’ she snapped. ‘It’s a disguise, remember? This isn’t going to work if the people meant to help me can’t keep their heads.’
‘It will work, Lady Granddaughter.’ Tess handed Fire two knives in ankle holsters. ‘You’ll get what you want from whomever you want. Tonight King Nash would give you the Winged River as a present, if you asked for it. Dells, child - Prince Brigan would give you his best warhorse.
”
”
Kristin Cashore (Fire (Graceling Realm, #2))
“
He has oppressed Beetle, M'Turk, and me, privatim et seriatim, one by one, as he could catch us. But now he has insulted Number Five up in the music-room, and in the presence of these - these ossifers of the Ninety-third, wot look like hairdressers. Binjimin, we must make him cry "Capivi!"'
Stalky's reading did not include Browning or Ruskin.
”
”
Rudyard Kipling (The Complete Stalky and Co.)
“
When dealing with older women, a trip to a hairdresser and two Bloody Marys goes further than any prescription drug. . . .
”
”
George Hodgman (Bettyville: A Memoir)
“
She had once told him that as soon as you placed your hands upon a stranger, they begin to talk. Everybody found it so, she said: hairdressers, nurses, nuns. It was dangerously easy to give in: human defences dissovled at another person's touch.
”
”
Charlotte Wood (Animal People)
“
Growth of human hair is the absolute blessing for a barber
”
”
Munia Khan
“
A whore should be judged by the same criteria as other professionals offering services for pay — such as dentists, lawyers, hairdressers, physicians, plumbers, etc. Is she professionally competent? Does she give good measure? Is she honest with her clients?
It is possible that the percentage of honest and competent whores is higher than that of plumbers and much higher than that of lawyers. And enormously higher than that of professors.
”
”
Robert A. Heinlein
“
A hairdresser talking with the Doctoresse about the bombing:
- "I'm not afraid of it. The dead are better off than we are."
- "But you don't know that."
- "Yes, I do. I'm sure of it because not a single one of them has ever returned.
”
”
Ernst Jünger (A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941-1945 (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism))
“
The ones referred to obliquely and the ones discussed in frank detail. She’d give the police everything they needed to convict her husband. She would say, Here is one possible motive and here is another, because any marriage of that many years has multiple motives for murder. Every police officer and hairdresser knows that.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (Apples Never Fall)
“
What is the road as it relates to wealth journey? If you're a Slowlaner, your road is your job: doctor, lawyer, engineer, salesman, hairdresser, pilot. If you're a Fastlaner, your road is a business: Internet entrepreneur, real estate investor, author, or inventor.
”
”
M.J. DeMarco (The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime!)
“
When people ask me what I do--taxi drivers, hairdressers--I tell them I work in an office.
”
”
Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
“
You know, Maureen, I seem to have seen that name somewhere.” “Home Perm, perhaps. He looks like a hairdresser.” Poirot winced.
”
”
Agatha Christie (Mrs. McGinty's Dead (Hercule Poirot, #32))
“
Later, in her dressing room, Rosa, the hairdresser and makeup woman, stopped by to say goodbye. “For the record, I liked the hair pencil.
”
”
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
“
how good I had it before I was married to a psychopath who would lock me in a room overnight just because I missed a hairdresser appointment.
”
”
Freida McFadden (The Housemaid (The Housemaid, #1))
“
Fit to fuck an emperor,” the hairdresser says when she’s finished. “If you’ll pardon the expression.
”
”
Elodie Harper (The Wolf Den (Wolf Den Trilogy, #1))
“
But there are three people, madame, to whom a woman should speak the truth. To her Father Confessor, to her hairdresser and to her private detective – if she trusts him.
”
”
Agatha Christie (Midwinter Murder: Fireside Tales from the Queen of Mystery)
“
It is good to be beautiful, but it should come of God and not of the hairdresser. And personal dignity is a great possession; but a man should struggle for it no more than he would for beauty.
”
”
Anthony Trollope (Complete Works of Anthony Trollope)
“
Warren’s wavy, light brown locks are less tamed than usual. They’re higher—poofier—like an old lady fresh from the hairdresser. He pats the top of his head self-consciously. “I forgot my gel. But it’s cool—chicks dig the curls.”
“Yeah, if it’s 1998 and your name is Justin Timberlake.” - Drew Evans
”
”
Emma Chase (Tied (Tangled, #4))
“
The retirement age for Greek jobs classified as "arduous" is as early as fifty-five for men and fifty for women. As this is also the moment when the state begins to shovel out generous pensions, more than six hundred Greek professions somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, writers, musicians, and on and on and on.
”
”
Michael Lewis (Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World)
“
Blade, she thought. I swallowed it; now cuts my loins forever. Punishment. Married to a Jew and shacking up with a German assassin. She felt tears again in her eyes, boiling. For all I have committed. Wrecked. 'Let's go,' she said, rising to her feet. 'The hairdresser.
”
”
Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle)
“
A good bricklayer can lay his last brick of the day, point up, wash up, turn his back on his day’s work, and every single one of the joints between the bricks will be exactly 15mm. Why? Because he’s done it so many times, that’s why. It’s repetitive.
It’s probably the same for a good hairdresser, a mechanic, a musician, a prostitute and I’m sure Masai Warriors hunting lions in the heart of the Masai Mara.
”
”
Karl Wiggins (Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe)
“
My dear Caroline,” I said. “There’s no doubt at all about what the man’s profession has been. He’s a retired hairdresser. Look at that moustache of his.” Caroline dissented. She said that if the man was a hairdresser, he would have wavy hair—not straight. All hairdressers did.
”
”
Agatha Christie (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Hercule Poirot, #4))
“
Still smiling, he leaned toward me. "You're jealous, aren't you?"
"Why would I be jealous of her?"
"Because she has what you don't."
"Which would be what? A bad hairdresser, poor rhythm, or a striking lack of financial sense when it comes to buying clothes?"
His smile grew. "Admit it, you're jealous."
"I'm not jealous." I straightened the napkins into a tall stack. "Rich people are so arrogant. You all think everyone just sits around coveting your wealth. Well, my happiness isn't dependent on my account numbers."
He gave a mock grunt. "I wasn't talking about Olivia's money. I was talking about me."
"Oh." It was suddenly hard to breathe.
”
”
Janette Rallison (It's a Mall World After All)
“
But tonight, Cupcake smiles at me. Her pink-and-white face lights up. “Samantha, hi!” As if she’s actually delighted to see me. I’m a jewel-colored cardigan. I’m a first edition of The Bell Jar. I’m a marzipan squirrel. I’m a hairdresser who knows exactly, exactly, how to handle her carefully undertucked bob of golden hair.
”
”
Mona Awad (Bunny (Bunny, #1))
“
According to Yiannis' sister Irini, who had trained as a hairdresser in London, the British spent their long winters in grey and black, and this was why they chose such gaudy colours for the summer: turquoise with blue, orange with pink, mauve with indigo. Colours that didn't go well with the bleached hair of the women and the reddish flush of tans that resulted from too great a greediness for the sun, as if Mother Nature, who hated to be hurried, had imprinted her exasperation on their skin.
”
”
Alison Fell (The Element -inth in Greek)
“
The scalp massage at the hairdresser, the flu jab I had last winter – the only time I experience touch is from people whom I am paying, and they are almost always wearing disposable gloves at the time. I’m merely stating the facts. People don’t like these facts, but I can’t help that. If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn’t spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.
”
”
Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
“
Illiterate communication was quicker, that was true, but not by much. I’d saved myself the trouble of typing four whole characters. Still, it was part of my new credo, trying new things. I’d tried it, and I very definitely did not like it. LOL could go and take a running jump. I wasn’t made for illiteracy; it simply didn’t come naturally. Although it’s good to try new things and to keep an open mind, it’s also extremely important to stay true to who you really are. I read that in a magazine at the hairdressers.
”
”
Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
“
But what revealed to me all of a sudden the Princess's love was a trifling incident upon which I shall not dwell here, for it forms part of quite another story, in which M. de Charlus allowed a Queen to die rather than miss an appointment with the hairdresser who was to singe his hair for the benefit of an omnibus conductor who filled him with alarm.
”
”
Marcel Proust (À la recherche du temps perdu (À la recherche du temps perdu, #1-7))
“
WE ARE the PULSE of the TIMES!
”
”
Carrie White
“
The New York Dolls were toweringly influential. They were way ahead of their time, although always reliably late at the hairdressers.
”
”
James Maker (Autofellatio)
“
So the bimbo’s a hairdresser? Sadly for her, I’ve seen better hair on a stray dog out on the street, over the bleached mess that she has on her head. “You
”
”
Danielle Jamie (Exes & Hos)
“
If your head fell off,” Tessa said, “the hairdressing industry would go into an economic meltdown.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Bane Chronicles)
“
She followed him into a dark parlor to which clung the musky sweet smell of clean Negro, snuff, and Hearts of Love hairdressing. Several shadowy forms rose when she entered.
”
”
Harper Lee (Go Set a Watchman)
“
For the first time in her life, Alba wanted to be beautiful. She regretted that the splendid women in her family had not bequeathed their attributes to her, that the only one who had, Rosa the Beautiful, had given her only the algae tones in her hair, which seemed more like a hairdresser's mistake then anything else. Miguel understood the source of her anxiety. He led her by the hand to the huge Venetian mirror that adorned one wall of their secret room, shook the dust from the cracked glass, and lit all the candles they had and arranged them around her. She stared at herself in the thousand pieces of the mirror. In the candlelight her skin was the unreal color of wax statues. Miguel began to caress her and she saw her face transformed in the kaleidoscope of the mirror, and she finally believed that she was the most beautiful woman in the universe because she was able to see herself with Miguel's eyes.
”
”
Isabel Allende (The House of the Spirits)
“
Society is going to have to deal with us not as nice little fairies who have hairdressing salons, but as people capable of violence. We’re not going to put up with Dan Whites anymore.
”
”
Cleve Jones (Stitching a Revolution: The Making of an Activist)
“
I had expected them to talk about my childlessness. I was armed with millions of smiles. Apologetic smiles, pity-me smiles, I-look-unto-God smiles - name all the fake smiles needed to get through an afternoon with a group of people who claim to want the best for you while poking at your open sore with a stick - and I had them ready. I was ready to listen to them tell me I must do something about my situation. I expected to hear about a new pastor I could visit; a new mountain where I could go to pray; or an old herbalist in a remote village or town whom I could consult. I was armed with smiles for my lips, an appropriate sheen of tears for my eyes and sniffles for my nose. I was prepared to lock up my hairdressing salon throughout the coming week and go in search of a miracle with my mother-in-law in tow. What I was not expecting was another smiling woman in the room, a yellow woman with a blood-red mouth who grinned like a new bride.
”
”
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (Stay with Me)
“
As they sat at the table, she did not like the girls talking among themselves, or discussing matters she knew nothing about, and she did not encourage any mention of boyfriends. She was mainly interested in clothes and shoes, and where they could be bought and at what price and at what time of the year. Changing fashions and new trends were her daily topic, although she herself, as she often pointed out, was too old for some of the new colours and styles. Yet, Eilis saw, she dressed impeccably and noticed every item each of her lodgers was wearing. She also loved discussing skin care and different types of skin and problems. Mrs. Kehoe had her hair done once a week, on a Saturday, using the same hairdresser each time, spending several hours with her so that her hair would be perfect for the rest of the week.
”
”
Colm Tóibín (Brooklyn)
“
Because you learn things when you talk to people, especially people who aren't like you. You learn what a goddamned polyglot race we are, we marvelous human beings. Some people are friendly. Some people are gruff. Some want security. Others want independence. Some want the government to run things. Some want to run things on their own. Some people need a helping hand. Some people need a kick in the pants. Some want to live and to die in the same small town. Some want to ramble the wide world. Some are content with little. Some cannot stop striving. Some want to life beside a true love, to worship a single god. Some crave a universe of loves, a universe of gods. I could go on and on. The differences between them, between me and you, between you and the woman sitting next to you at the hairdresser, wearing that dress you'd never wear in a million years, reading that book you wouldn't touch. The genius of politics, of people like Frank, is to link them all, understand them all, to represent them all. Not just the ones you agree with, the ones that think and act like you do.
”
”
Beatriz Williams (Tiny Little Thing (Schuyler Sisters, #2))
“
War thoughts again. I think back to the business cards from that health shop earlier on. I think about miniature wars that individuals fight all the time. They fight against cellulite, or negative emotions, or addictions, or stress. I think about how we can now hire all different sorts of mercenaries to help us fight against ourselves…Therapists, manicurists, hairdressers, personal trainers, life coaches. But what’s it all for? What do all these little wars achieve? Although it is a part of my life too, and I want to be thin and pretty and not laughed at in the street and not so stressed and mad that I start screaming on the tube, it suddenly seems a little bit ridiculous. All the time we do these things we are trying to enlist ourselves into a bigger war. We are trying to join up, constantly, with the enemy.
-
Hitler tried to impose his shiny, blonde, neat, sparkling world on us all and we resisted. So how is it that when McDonald’s and Disney and The Gap and L’Oreal and all the others try to do the same thing we all just say, ‘OK’? Hitler needed marketing, that’s all. His propaganda was, of course, brilliant for its time, everyone knows that. What a great idea, to make people feel that they belong to something, that their identity makes them special. If Hilter had bee able to enlist a twenty-first-century marketing department, would he have been able to sell Nazism to everyone? Why not? You can just see a beautiful, thin woman with her long blonde hair moving softly in the breezes, and the tagline ‘Because I’m worth it’.
”
”
Scarlett Thomas (PopCo)
“
Well, I divide the father question into three separate categories. First, there's the sire. He makes a baby, that's it. Doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the lamb once it's' planted, though he might. Anyone with a set of gonads can be a sire. Then there's the father. He also does the fertilization, but he sticks around provides support, both financial and emotional. Then in our little corner of the world we have daddies. A daddy is the more mature man in a sexual relationship, one who provides direction, discipline...and love for his brat.
”
”
Scribe Mozell (Clean Cut (The Further Adventures of Clive, the Leather Hairdresser, #2))
“
The Loneliness of the Military Historian
Confess: it's my profession
that alarms you.
This is why few people ask me to dinner,
though Lord knows I don't go out of my way to be scary.
I wear dresses of sensible cut
and unalarming shades of beige,
I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser's:
no prophetess mane of mine,
complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters.
If I roll my eyes and mutter,
if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror
like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene,
I do it in private and nobody sees
but the bathroom mirror.
In general I might agree with you:
women should not contemplate war,
should not weigh tactics impartially,
or evade the word enemy,
or view both sides and denounce nothing.
Women should march for peace,
or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery,
spit themselves on bayonets
to protect their babies,
whose skulls will be split anyway,
or,having been raped repeatedly,
hang themselves with their own hair.
There are the functions that inspire general comfort.
That, and the knitting of socks for the troops
and a sort of moral cheerleading.
Also: mourning the dead.
Sons,lovers and so forth.
All the killed children.
Instead of this, I tell
what I hope will pass as truth.
A blunt thing, not lovely.
The truth is seldom welcome,
especially at dinner,
though I am good at what I do.
My trade is courage and atrocities.
I look at them and do not condemn.
I write things down the way they happened,
as near as can be remembered.
I don't ask why, because it is mostly the same.
Wars happen because the ones who start them
think they can win.
In my dreams there is glamour.
The Vikings leave their fields
each year for a few months of killing and plunder,
much as the boys go hunting.
In real life they were farmers.
The come back loaded with splendour.
The Arabs ride against Crusaders
with scimitars that could sever
silk in the air.
A swift cut to the horse's neck
and a hunk of armour crashes down
like a tower. Fire against metal.
A poet might say: romance against banality.
When awake, I know better.
Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,
or none that could be finally buried.
Finish one off, and circumstances
and the radio create another.
Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently
to God all night and meant it,
and been slaughtered anyway.
Brutality wins frequently,
and large outcomes have turned on the invention
of a mechanical device, viz. radar.
True, valour sometimes counts for something,
as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right -
though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition,
is decided by the winner.
Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades
and burst like paper bags of guts
to save their comrades.
I can admire that.
But rats and cholera have won many wars.
Those, and potatoes,
or the absence of them.
It's no use pinning all those medals
across the chests of the dead.
Impressive, but I know too much.
Grand exploits merely depress me.
In the interests of research
I have walked on many battlefields
that once were liquid with pulped
men's bodies and spangled with exploded
shells and splayed bone.
All of them have been green again
by the time I got there.
Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day.
Sad marble angels brood like hens
over the grassy nests where nothing hatches.
(The angels could just as well be described as vulgar
or pitiless, depending on camera angle.)
The word glory figures a lot on gateways.
Of course I pick a flower or two
from each, and press it in the hotel Bible
for a souvenir.
I'm just as human as you.
But it's no use asking me for a final statement.
As I say, I deal in tactics.
Also statistics:
for every year of peace there have been four hundred
years of war.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Morning In The Burned House: Poems)
“
She was grown up; she was twenty-nine! It was only recently that she’d been walking home from the hairdresser’s, feeling gorgeous, and a gaggle of teenage girls walked by, and the sound of their strident giggles made her send a message back through time to her fourteen-year-old self: “Don’t worry, it all works out. You get a personality, you get a job, you work out what to do with your hair, and you get a boy who thinks you’re beautiful.” She’d felt so together, as if all the teenage angst and the failed relationships before Nick had all been part of a perfectly acceptable plan that was leading to this moment, when she would be twenty-nine years old and everything would finally be just as it should be.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (What Alice Forgot)
“
Novelists,’ said Ivo, ‘are to the nineties what cooks were to the eighties, hairdressers to the seventies and pop-stars to the sixties… Merely, you know, an expression of the Zeitgeist, Nobody actually reads novels any more, but it’s a fashionable thing to be a novelist – as long as you don’t entertain people of course. I sometimes think,’ said Ivo, his eyes like industrial diamonds, ‘that my sole virtue is, I’m the only person in London who has no intention of writing any kind of novel, ever.
”
”
Amanda Craig (A Vicious Circle)
“
I don’t really mind Beatrix, but I do think it’s time for her to take a step back. She ought to devote more time to her painting and less time to her hairdresser. That stiff hairdo has irked me for years. I shouldn’t let it aggravate me, but I can’t help it.
”
”
Hendrik Groen (The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old)
“
Women always think that when they have my shoes, my dress , my hairdresser, my make-up, it will all work the same way. They do not conceive of the witchcraft that is needed. They do not know that I am not beautiful but that I only appear to be at certain moments.
”
”
Anaïs Nin (Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932)
“
Don’t be afraid of aging. As the saying goes, don’t be afraid of anything but fear itself. Find “your” perfume before you turn thirty. Wear it for the next thirty years. No one should ever see your gums when you talk or laugh. If you own only one sweater, make sure it’s cashmere. Wear a black bra under your white blouse, like two notes on a sheet of music. One must live with the opposite sex, not against them. Except when making love. Be unfaithful: cheat on your perfume, but only on cold days. Go to the theater, to museums, and to concerts as often as possible: it gives you a healthy glow. Be aware of your qualities and your faults. Cultivate them in private but don’t obsess. Make it look easy. Everything you do should seem effortless and graceful. Not too much makeup, too many colors, too many accessories … Take a deep breath and keep it simple. Your look should always have one thing left undone—the devil is in the details. Be your own knight in shining armor. Cut your own hair or ask your sister to do it for you. Of course you know celebrity hairdressers, but only as friends. Always be fuckable: when standing in line at the bakery on a Sunday morning, buying champagne in the middle of the night, or even picking the kids up from school. You never know. Either go all gray or no gray hair. Salt and pepper is for the table.
”
”
Anne Berest (How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are: Love, Style, and Bad Habits)
“
She was Joy’s confidante and confessor, as bound by secrecy as a priest or lawyer, but if Joy missed her next appointment, Narelle would go to the police and hand over thirty years of secrets. She’d tell them about the betrayals. The ones referred to obliquely and the ones discussed in frank detail. She’d give the police everything they needed to convict her husband. She would say, Here is one possible motive and here is another, because any marriage of that many years has multiple motives for murder. Every police officer and hairdresser knows that.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (Apples Never Fall)
“
Maybe that was what she had always secretly desired, not to be my daughter. She was telling me about herself neurotically, from a distant continent. She was talking about her hair, about how she had to wash it constantly because it never came out right, about the hairdresser who had ruined it, and so she wasn’t going to the party, she would never go out of the house with her hair looking like that, Bianca would go alone, because her hair was beautiful, and she spoke as if it were my fault, I hadn’t made her in such a way that she could be happy. Old reproaches.
”
”
Elena Ferrante (The Lost Daughter)
“
To be dispensable is a woman's worst nightmare and I was beginning to live it. [36]
”
”
Tendai Huchu (The Hairdresser of Harare)
“
The typical metrosexual is a young man with money to spend, living in or within easy reach of a metropolis — because that’s where all the best shops, clubs, gyms and hairdressers are. He might be officially gay, straight or bisexual, but this is utterly immaterial because he has clearly taken himself as his own love object and pleasure as his sexual preference.
”
”
Mark Simpson
“
been walking home from the hairdresser’s, feeling gorgeous, and a gaggle of teenage girls walked by, and the sound of their strident giggles made her send a message back through time to her fourteen-year-old self: “Don’t worry, it all works out. You get a personality, you get a job, you work out what to do with your hair, and you get a boy who thinks you’re beautiful.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (What Alice Forgot)
“
AS IT HAPPENED, CATHY’S CONFIRMATION DAY was a great success. By the time the hairdresser was finished with her, Cathy was more than pleased with the outcome. On the day she wore a pink two-piece suit decorated with tiny flowers around the edge of the lapel, a white high-collared blouse and white shoes. Archbishop McQuaid gave her the Sacrament of Confirmation, and to her relief Cathy was not even asked a question. The one-and-a-half-hour ceremony was followed by lunch in Bewley’s Café which, as always, was sumptuous. Then began the obligatory visiting of friends and relations. Transport for the day was provided by Ned Brady, a local baker. Ned had an Austin Cambridge and supplied the car, himself as driver and the petrol for five pounds. By
”
”
Brendan O'Carroll (The Mammy (Agnes Browne, #1))
“
In May 1993, Clinton ordered the presidential plane to wait on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport while he got a haircut from Christophe Schatteman, a Beverly Hills hairdresser. Schatteman’s clients have included Nicole Kidman, Goldie Hawn, and Steven Spielberg. “We flew out of San Diego to L.A. to pick him up,” recalls James Saddler, a steward on the infamous trip. “Some guy came out and said he was supposed to cut the president’s hair. Christophe cut his hair, and we took off. We were on the ground for an hour. They closed the runways.” While Christophe cut Clinton’s hair, two runways at LAX were closed. That meant all incoming and outgoing flights had to be halted. Clinton’s thoughtlessness inconvenienced passengers throughout the country. Like
”
”
Ronald Kessler (The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents)
“
Harriet Larson had said yes all her life. To her parents. To her teachers. To Lou and the girls. To Corinne and Sophie. She'd said yes to shopkeepers, to doctors, to car salesmen, to Girl Scout leaders, to Mormons on rounds, to hairdressers who wouldn't let her go gray. She'd been raised to say yes, to agree and approve and adapt and accommodate, to step aside as the architect of her own happiness. After Lou's death she vowed to say yes only when that yes belonged to her, solely to her. And so: Yes to college. Yes to teaching. Yes to retirement. Yes without being asked; yes before being asked. Yes to Book Club. Yes to Violet. Yes to the filthy and broken Dawna-Lynn, for whom she was searching out a bright, becoming color from a closet too full of beige. These yesses felt like power, like gateways, like love.
"Frank." She laid her cheek on his chest. "Yes.
”
”
Monica Wood (How to Read a Book)
“
Later on in Culture and Society, Williams scores a few points by reprinting some absolutist sentences that, taken on their own, represent exaggerations or generalisations. It was a strength and weakness of Orwell’s polemical journalism that he would begin an essay with a bold and bald statement designed to arrest attention—a tactic that, as Williams rightly notices, he borrowed in part from GK Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw. No regular writer can re-read his own output of ephemera without encountering a few wince-making moments of this kind; Williams admits to ‘isolating’ them but has some fun all the same. The flat sentence ‘a humanitarian is always a hypocrite’ may contain a particle of truth—does in fact contain such a particle—but will not quite do on its own. Other passages of Orwell’s, on the failure of the Western socialist movement, read more convincingly now than they did when Williams was mocking them, but are somewhat sweeping for all that. And there are the famous outbursts of ill-temper against cranks and vegetarians and homosexuals, which do indeed disfigure the prose and (even though we still admire Pope and Swift for the heroic unfairness of their invective) probably deserve rebuke. However, Williams betrays his hidden bias even when addressing these relatively easy targets. He upbraids Orwell for the repeated use of the diminutive word ‘little’ as an insult (‘The typical Socialist ... a prim little man,’ ‘the typical little bowlerhatted sneak,’ etc.). Now, it is probable that we all overuse the term ‘little’ and its analogues. Williams does at one point—rather ‘loftily’ perhaps—reproach his New Left colleagues for being too ready to dismiss Orwell as ‘petit-bourgeois.’ But what about (I draw the example at random) Orwell’s disgust at the behaviour of the English crowd in the First World War, when ‘wretched little German bakers and hairdressers had their shops sacked by the mob’?
”
”
Christopher Hitchens
“
Addie Moore had a grandson named Jamie who was just turning six. In the early summer the trouble between his parents got worse. There were bad arguments in the kitchen and bedroom, accusations and recriminations, her tears and his shouts. They finally separated on a trial basis and she went off to California to stay with a friend, leaving Jamie with his father. He called Addie and told her what happened, that his wife had quit her job as a hairdresser and had gone out to the West Coast.
”
”
Kent Haruf (Our Souls at Night)
“
[The Greeks] went to the open-air theatre expecting the drama they saw to evoke terror and pity.
Nowadays we have enough terror and pity in our own lives and so rather than going to the theatre looking for terror, we go looking for slight irritation. And rather than looking for the theatre to evoke pity, we look merely for a generalized sense of identification as in “Evita was a woman, I am a woman." Or “Sweeney Todd was a barber, I go to the hairdresser." Or “Fosca in Passion should have her moles removed, I know a good dermatologist." That sort of thing.
”
”
Christopher Durang (Christopher Durang Volume I: 27 Short Plays)
“
He wrote about how stupid the people there could be. I never imagines white people could be stupid. He met people who had never read Shakespear and couldn't form a proper sentence in their own native tongue - though in this respect it looked as if my own daughter might be taking the same route. [29]
”
”
Tendai Huchu (The Hairdresser of Harare)
“
It was only recently that she’d been walking home from the hairdresser’s, feeling gorgeous, and a gaggle of teenage girls walked by, and the sound of their strident giggles made her send a message back through time to her fourteen-year-old self: “Don’t worry, it all works out. You get a personality, you get a job, you work out what to do with your hair, and you get a boy who thinks you’re beautiful.” She’d felt so together, as if all the teenage angst and the failed relationships before Nick had all been part of a perfectly acceptable plan that was leading to this moment, when she would be twenty-nine years old and everything would finally be just as it should be.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (What Alice Forgot)
“
He came from plebeian roots and had failed to distinguish himself in any way, not in war, not in work, not in art, though in this last domain he believed himself to have great talent. He was said to be indolent. He rose late, worked little, and surrounded himself with the lesser lights of the party with whom he felt most comfortable, an entourage of middlebrow souls that Putzi Hanfstaengl derisively nicknamed the “Chauffeureska,” consisting of bodyguards, adjutants, and a chauffeur. He loved movies—King Kong was a favorite—and he adored the music of Richard Wagner. He dressed badly. Apart from his mustache and his eyes, the features of his face were indistinct and unimpressive, as if begun in clay but never fired. Recalling his first impression of Hitler, Hanfstaengl wrote, “Hitler looked like a suburban hairdresser on his day off.
”
”
Erik Larson (In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin)
“
But I was thinking of Polly. If Boy was bored and lonely she was not likely to be very happy either. The success or failure of all human relationships lies in the atmosphere each person is aware of creating for the other, what atmosphere could a disillusioned Polly feel that she was creating for a bored and lonely Boy? Her charm, apart from her beauty, and husbands, we know, get accustomed to the beauty of their wives so that it ceases to strike them at the heart, her charm used to derive from the sphinx-like quality which came from her secret dream of Boy; in the early days of that dream coming true, at Alconleigh, happiness had made her irresistible. But I quite saw that with the riddle solved, and if the happiness were dissolved, Polly, without her own little daily round of Madame Rita, Debenhams and the hairdresser to occupy her, and too low in vitality to invent new interests for herself, might easily sink into sulky dumps. She was not at all likely to find consolation in Sicilian folk-lore, I knew, and probably not, not yet, anyhow, in Sicilian noblemen.
'Oh, dear,' I said. 'If Boy isn't happy I don't suppose Polly can be either. Oh, poor Polly.
”
”
Nancy Mitford (Love in a Cold Climate (Radlett & Montdore, #2))
“
Eric, my German hairdresser, was waiting for me in the large dressing room upstairs. He’d cut my auburn hair since I was six and had seen it through tragic self-trimmings of my bangs, unfortunate summers of excessive Sun-In use, and horrible home perms gone terribly wrong. He’d never shrunk from haughtily chastising me through my follicular antics and had thrown in plenty of Teutonic life coaching along the way, on every subject from pimply high school boys to current events and politics. And he’d pretty much made me feel equal parts stupid and uncultured on more than one occasion with his superior knowledge of theater and art and opera.
But I loved him. He was important to me. So when I asked him to come to my wedding to transform my hair into an elegant and sexy and uncontrived but polished updo, Eric had answered, simply, “Yes.”
And the moment I sat down in the chair, he chastised me for washing my hair right before I arrived.
“Ees juss too smooz,” Eric scolded.
“I’m sorry,” I begged. “Please don’t ground me, Eric. I didn’t want my head to stink on my wedding night.”
And for the first time ever, I saw Eric crack a relaxed, mellow smile.
I loved it that Eric was there.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
And there, until 1884, it was possible to gaze on the remains of a generally neglected monument, so-called Dagobert’s Tower, which included a ninth-century staircase set into the masonry, of which the thirty-foot handrail was fashioned out of the trunk of a gigantic oak tree. Here, according to tradition, lived a barber and a pastry-cook, who in the year 1335 plied their trade next door to each other. The reputation of the pastry-cook, whose products were among the most delicious that could be found, grew day by day. Members of the high-ranking clergy in particular were very fond of the extraordinary meat pies that, on the grounds of keeping to himself the secret of how the meats were seasoned, our man made all on his own, with the sole assistance of an apprentice who was responsible for the pastry.
His neighbor the barber had won favor with the public through his honesty, his skilled hairdressing and shaving, and the steam baths he offered. Now, thanks to a dog that insistently scratched at the ground in a certain place, the ghastly origins of the meat used by the pastry-cook became known, for the animal unearthed some human bones! It was established that every Saturday before shutting up shop the barber would offer to shave a foreign student for free. He would put the unsuspecting young man in a tip-back seat and then cut his throat. The victim was immediately rushed down to the cellar, where the pastry-cook took delivery of him, cut him up, and added the requisite seasoning. For which the pies were famed, ‘especially as human flesh is more delicate because of the diet,’ old Dubreuil comments facetiously.
The two wretched fellows were burned with their pies, the house was ordered to be demolished, and in its place was built a kind of expiatory pyramid, with the figure of the dog on one of its faces. The pyramid was there until 1861.
But this is where the story takes another turn and joins the very best of black comedy. For the considerable number of ecclesiastics who had unwittingly consumed human flesh were not only guilty before God of the very venial sin of greed; they were automatically excommunicated! A grand council was held under the aegis of several bishops and it was decided to send to Avignon, where Pope Clement VI resided, a delegation of prelates with a view to securing the rescindment if not of the Christian interdiction against cannibalism then at least of the torments of hell that faced the inadvertent cannibals. The delegation set off, with a tidy sum of money, bare-footed, bearing candles and singing psalms. But the roads of that time were not very safe and doubtless strewn with temptation. Anyway, the fact is that Clement VI never saw any sign of the penitents, and with good reason.
”
”
Jacques Yonnet (Paris Noir: The Secret History of a City)
“
Your womb can’t never bear fruit.”
Miss Ethel Fordham told her that. Without sorrow or alarm, she had passed along the news as though she’d examined a Burpee seedling overcome by marauding rabbits. Cee didn’t know then what to feel about that news, no more than what she felt about Dr. Beau. Anger wasn’t available to her—she had been so stupid, so eager to please. As usual she blamed being dumb on her lack of schooling, but that excuse fell apart the second she thought about the skilled women who had cared for her, healed her. Some of them had to have Bible verses read to them because they could not decipher print themselves, so they had sharpened the skills of the illiterate: perfect memory, photographic minds, keen senses of smell and hearing. And they knew how to repair what an educated bandit doctor had plundered. If not schooling, then what?
Branded early as an unlovable, barely tolerated “gutter
child” by Lenore, the only one whose opinion mattered to her parents, exactly like what Miss Ethel said, she had agreed with the label and believed herself worthless. Ida never said, “You my child. I dote on you. You wasn’t born in no gutter. You born into my arms. Come on over here and let me give you a hug.” If not her mother, somebody somewhere should have said those words and meant them.
Frank alone valued her. While his devotion shielded her, it did not strengthen her. Should it have? Why was that his job and not her own? Cee didn’t know any soft, silly women. Not Thelma, or Sarah, or Ida, and certainly not the women who had healed her. Even Mrs. K., who let the boys play nasty with her, did hair and slapped anybody who messed with her, in or outside her hairdressing kitchen.
So it was just herself. In this world with these people she wanted to be the person who would never again need rescue. Not from Lenore through the lies of the Rat, not from Dr. Beau through the courage of Sarah and her brother. Sun-smacked or not, she wanted to be the one who rescued her own self. Did she have a mind, or not? Wishing would not make it so, nor would blame, but thinking might. If she did not respect herself, why should anybody else?
Okay. She would never have children to care about and give her the status of motherhood.
Okay. She didn’t have and probably would never have a mate. Why should that matter? Love? Please. Protection? Yeah, sure. Golden eggs? Don’t make me laugh.
Okay. She was penniless. But not for long. She would have to invent a way to earn a living.
What else?
”
”
Toni Morrison (Home)