No Shave November Quotes

January? The month is dumb. It is fraudulent. It does not cleanse itself. The hens lay blood-stained eggs. Do not lend your bread to anyone lest it nevermore rise. Do not eat lentils or your hair will fall out. Do not rely on February except when your cat has kittens, throbbing into the snow. Do not use knives and forks unless there is a thaw, like the yawn of a baby. The sun in this month begets a headache like an angel slapping you in the face. Earthquakes mean March. The dragon will move, and the earth will open like a wound. There will be great rain or snow so save some coal for your uncle. The sun of this month cures all. Therefore, old women say: Let the sun of March shine on my daughter, but let the sun of February shine on my daughter-in-law. However, if you go to a party dressed as the anti-Christ you will be frozen to death by morning. During the rainstorms of April the oyster rises from the sea and opens its shell — rain enters it — when it sinks the raindrops become the pearl. So take a picnic, open your body, and give birth to pearls. June and July? These are the months we call Boiling Water. There is sweat on the cat but the grape marries herself to the sun. Hesitate in August. Be shy. Let your toes tremble in their sandals. However, pick the grape and eat with confidence. The grape is the blood of God. Watch out when holding a knife or you will behead St. John the Baptist. Touch the Cross in September, knock on it three times and say aloud the name of the Lord. Put seven bowls of salt on the roof overnight and the next morning the damp one will foretell the month of rain. Do not faint in September or you will wake up in a dead city. If someone dies in October do not sweep the house for three days or the rest of you will go. Also do not step on a boy's head for the devil will enter your ears like music. November? Shave, whether you have hair or not. Hair is not good, nothing is allowed to grow, all is allowed to die. Because nothing grows you may be tempted to count the stars but beware, in November counting the stars gives you boils. Beware of tall people, they will go mad. Don't harm the turtle dove because he is a great shoe that has swallowed Christ's blood. December? On December fourth water spurts out of the mouse. Put herbs in its eyes and boil corn and put the corn away for the night so that the Lord may trample on it and bring you luck. For many days the Lord has been shut up in the oven. After that He is boiled, but He never dies, never dies.

Philby now went in for the kill. Elliott had tipped him off that he would be cleared by Macmillan, but mere exoneration was not enough: he needed Lipton to retract his allegations, publicly, humiliatingly, and quickly. After a telephone consultation with Elliott, he instructed his mother to inform all callers that he would be holding a press conference in Dora’s Drayton Gardens flat the next morning. When Philby opened the door a few minutes before 11:00 a.m. on November 8, he was greeted with gratifying proof of his new celebrity. The stairwell was packed with journalists from the world’s press. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “Do come in.” Philby had prepared carefully. Freshly shaved and neatly barbered, he wore a well-cut pinstriped suit, a sober and authoritative tie, and his most charming smile. The journalists trooped into his mother’s sitting room, where they packed themselves around the walls. Camera flashes popped. In a conspicuous (and calculated) act of old-world gallantry, Philby asked a journalist sitting in an armchair if he would mind giving up his seat to a lady journalist forced to stand in the doorway. The man leaped to his feet. The television cameras rolled. What followed was a dramatic tour de force, a display of cool public dishonesty that few politicians or lawyers could match. There was no trace of a stammer, no hint of nerves or embarrassment. Philby looked the world in the eye with a steady gaze and lied his head off. Footage of Philby’s famous press conference is still used as a training tool by MI6, a master class in mendacity.

On 20 November, front-line troops got 500 grams of bread per day, factory workers received 250, and everyone else 125 (that is, two slices). ‘Twigs were collected and stewed,’ records an historian of the siege. ‘Peat shavings, cottonseed cake, bonemeal was pressed into use. Pine sawdust was processed and added to the bread. Mouldy grain was dredged from sunken barges and scraped out of the holds of ships. Soon Leningrad bread was containing 10% cottonseed cake that had been processed to remove poisons. Household pets, shoe leather, fir bark and insects were consumed, as was wallpaper paste which was reputed to be made with potato flour. Guinea pigs, white mice and rabbits were saved from vivisection in the city’s laboratories for a more immediately practical fate. ‘Today it is so simple to die,’ wrote one resident, Yelena Skryabina, in her diary. ‘You just begin to lose interest, then you lie on your bed and you never get up again. Yet some people were willing to go to any lengths in order to survive: 226 people were arrested for cannibalism during the siege. ‘Human meat is being sold in the markets,’ concluded one secret NKVD report, ‘while in the cemeteries bodies pile up like carcasses, without coffins.

No shave "Mow-vember.