Philadelphia Here I Come Quotes

I am, and always have been - first, last, and always - a child of America. You raised me. I grew up in the pastures and hills of Texas, but I had been to thirty-four states before I learned how to drive. When I caught the stomach flu in the fifth grade, my mother sent a note to school written on the back of a holiday memo from Vice President Biden. Sorry, sir—we were in a rush, and it was the only paper she had on hand. I spoke to you for the first time when I was eighteen, on the stage of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, when I introduced my mother as the nominee for president. You cheered for me. I was young and full of hope, and you let me embody the American dream: that a boy who grew up speaking two languages, whose family was blended and beautiful and enduring, could make a home for himself in the White House. You pinned the flag to my lapel and said, “We’re rooting for you.” As I stand before you today, my hope is that I have not let you down. Years ago, I met a prince. And though I didn’t realize it at the time, his country had raised him too. The truth is, Henry and I have been together since the beginning of this year. The truth is, as many of you have read, we have both struggled every day with what this means for our families, our countries, and our futures. The truth is, we have both had to make compromises that cost us sleep at night in order to afford us enough time to share our relationship with the world on our own terms. We were not afforded that liberty. But the truth is, also, simply this: love is indomitable. America has always believed this. And so, I am not ashamed to stand here today where presidents have stood and say that I love him, the same as Jack loved Jackie, the same as Lyndon loved Lady Bird. Every person who bears a legacy makes the choice of a partner with whom they will share it, whom the American people will “hold beside them in hearts and memories and history books. America: He is my choice. Like countless other Americans, I was afraid to say this out loud because of what the consequences might be. To you, specifically, I say: I see you. I am one of you. As long as I have a place in this White House, so will you. I am the First Son of the United States, and I’m bisexual. History will remember us. If I can ask only one thing of the American people, it’s this: Please, do not let my actions influence your decision in November. The decision you will make this year is so much bigger than anything I could ever say or do, and it will determine the fate of this country for years to come. My mother, your president, is the warrior and the champion that each and every American deserves for four more years of growth, progress, and prosperity. Please, don’t let my actions send us backward. I ask the media not to focus on me or on Henry, but on the campaign, on policy, on the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans at stake in this election. And finally, I hope America will remember that I am still the son you raised. My blood still runs from Lometa, Texas, and San Diego, California, and Mexico City. I still remember the sound of your voices from that stage in Philadelphia. I wake up every morning thinking of your hometowns, of the families I’ve met at rallies in Idaho and Oregon and South Carolina. I have never hoped to be anything other than what I was to you then, and what I am to you now—the First Son, yours in actions and words. And I hope when Inauguration Day comes again in January, I will continue to be.

I’m from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” Sistine said, “home of the Liberty Bell, and I hate the South because the people in it are ignorant. And I’m not staying here in Lister. My father is coming to get me next week.” She looked around the room defiantly. “Well,” said Mrs. Soames, “thank you very much for introducing yourself, Sistine Bailey. You may take your seat before you put your foot in your mouth any farther.” The

She looked down at the man. His face appeared different than the first time she had seen him, as if he'd fought some battle and won. A peacefulness stole over her, causing her to take a deep breath. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply. His scent filled her mind and her fingers began to glide through his hair, exploring the shape of his head, then his temples, then down to the sharp plain of his cheekbones. "Come back, my duke," she whispered. "I have need to see thee fattened up and shouting orders." Suddenly she felt a touch on her cheek. Caught in the dreamlike spell, she turned into the hand without opening her eyes. As she had done, he caressed her cheek. Now his thumb ran along the line of her jaw. When fingers touched her lips, her eyes fluttered open. "Your voice saved me." His own was raspy and deep, but gratitude glowed in the dark pools that were his eyes. And he was even more devastatingly attractive with them open. Serena drew a sharp breath, wanting to get up, both trapped beneath his weight and that of his words. "Thou hast been very sick." She strained to right her senses. When she started to slide out from under his head, he grasped her hand with surprising strength. "Stay." "I must not. My father will be back soon." "Have we reached Philadelphia then?" "Yes. The others have already been sold. 'Tis fortunate thee wert so ill and escaped the soul-drivers, sir." As she spoke, she slid out from beneath his head and refilled his cup. "Here, have another drink, and thou wilt hear the tale." He smiled at her with such a look that she thought she might melt into the wood f the floor. "A long story, I hope. I would listen to your voice forever." Heat surged to her cheeks, her gaze dropping to the floor. Her mind told her how inappropriate it was to behave like this with a complete stranger. And yet, it was as if other parts of her- her heart, her soul, her very skin- knew him as deeply as she knew herself.

From Walt: The Grapes of Wrath, Les Misérables, To Kill a Mockingbird, Moby-Dick, The Ox-Bow Incident, A Tale of Two Cities, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote (where your nickname came from), The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and anything by Anton Chekhov. From Henry: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Cheyenne Autumn, War and Peace, The Things They Carried, Catch-22, The Sun Also Rises, The Blessing Way, Beyond Good and Evil, The Teachings of Don Juan, Heart of Darkness, The Human Comedy, The Art of War. From Vic: Justine, Concrete Charlie: The Story of Philadelphia Football Legend Chuck Bednarik, Medea (you’ll love it; it’s got a great ending), The Kama Sutra, Henry and June, The Onion Field, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Zorba the Greek, Madame Bovary, Richie Ashburn’s Phillies Trivia (fuck you, it’s a great book). From Ruby: The Holy Bible (New Testament), The Pilgrim’s Progress, Inferno, Paradise Lost, My Ántonia, The Scarlet Letter, Walden, Poems of Emily Dickinson, My Friend Flicka, Our Town. From Dorothy: The Gastronomical Me, The French Chef Cookbook (you don’t eat, you don’t read), Last Suppers: Famous Final Meals From Death Row, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Something Fresh, The Sound and the Fury, The Maltese Falcon, Pride and Prejudice, Brides-head Revisited. From Lucian: Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, Band of Brothers, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Virginian, The Basque History of the World (so you can learn about your heritage you illiterate bastard), Hondo, Sackett, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Bobby Fischer: My 60 Memorable Games, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Quartered Safe Out Here. From Ferg: Riders of the Purple Sage, Kiss Me Deadly, Lonesome Dove, White Fang, A River Runs Through It (I saw the movie, but I heard the book was good, too), Kip Carey’s Official Wyoming Fishing Guide (sorry, kid, I couldn’t come up with ten but this ought to do).

C. M. Knaphle, Jr., of Philadelphia had tried for years to sell fuel to a large chain-store organization. But the chain-store company continued to purchase its fuel from an out-of-town dealer and haul it right past the door of Knaphle’s office. Mr. Knaphle made a speech one night before one of my classes, pouring out his hot wrath upon chain stores, branding them as a curse to the nation. And still he wondered why he couldn’t sell them. I suggested that he try different tactics. To put it briefly, this is what happened. We staged a debate between members of the course on whether the spread of the chain store is doing the country more harm than good. Knaphle, at my suggestion, took the negative side; he agreed to defend the chain stores, and then went straight to an executive of the chain-store organization that he despised and said: “I am not here to try to sell fuel. I have come to ask you to do me a favor.” He then told about his debate and said, “I have come to you for help because I can’t think of anyone else who would be more capable of giving me the facts I want. I’m anxious to win this debate, and I’ll deeply appreciate whatever help you can give me.” Here is the rest of the story in Mr. Knaphle’s own words: I had asked this man for precisely one minute of his time. It was with that understanding that he consented to see me. After I had stated my case, he motioned me to a chair and talked to me for exactly one hour and forty-seven minutes. He called in another executive who had written a book on chain stores. He wrote to the National Chain Store Association and secured for me a copy of a debate on the subject. He feels that the chain store is rendering a real service to humanity. He is proud of what he is doing for hundreds of communities. His eyes fairly glowed as he talked, and I must confess that he opened my eyes to things I had never even dreamed of. He changed my whole mental attitude. As I was leaving, he walked with me to the door, put his arm around my shoulder, wished me well in my debate, and asked me to stop in and see him again and let him know how I made out. The last words he said to me were: “Please see me again later in the spring. I should like to place an order with you for fuel.” To me that was almost a miracle. Here he was offering to buy fuel without my even suggesting it. I had made more headway in two hours by becoming genuinely interested in him and his problems than I could have made in ten years trying to get him interested in me and my product.

Successful con men are treated with considerable respect in the South. A good slice of the settler population of that region were men who’d been given a choice between being shipped off to the New World in leg-irons and spending the rest of their lives in English prisons. The Crown saw no point in feeding them year after year, and they were far too dangerous to be turned loose on the streets of London—so, rather than overload the public hanging schedule, the King’s Minister of Gaol decided to put this scum to work on the other side of the Atlantic, in The Colonies, where cheap labor was much in demand. Most of these poor bastards wound up in what is now the Deep South because of the wretched climate. No settler with good sense and a few dollars in his pocket would venture south of Richmond. There was plenty of opportunity around Boston, New York, and Philadelphia—and by British standards the climate in places like South Carolina and Georgia was close to Hell on Earth: swamps, alligators, mosquitoes, tropical disease... all this plus a boiling sun all day long and no way to make money unless you had a land grant from the King... So the South was sparsely settled at first, and the shortage of skilled labor was a serious problem to the scattered aristocracy of would-be cotton barons who’d been granted huge tracts of good land that would make them all rich if they could only get people to work it. The slave-trade was one answer, but Africa in 1699 was not a fertile breeding ground for middle-management types... and the planters said it was damn near impossible for one white man to establish any kind of control over a boatload of black primitives. The bastards couldn’t even speak English. How could a man get the crop in, with brutes like that for help? There would have to be managers, keepers, overseers: white men who spoke the language, and had a sense of purpose in life. But where would they come from? There was no middle class in the South: only masters and slaves... and all that rich land lying fallow. The King was quick to grasp the financial implications of the problem: The crops must be planted and harvested, in order to sell them for gold—and if all those lazy bastards needed was a few thousand half-bright English-speaking lackeys in order to bring the crops in... hell, that was easy: Clean out the jails, cut back on the Crown’s grocery bill, jolt the liberals off balance by announcing a new “Progressive Amnesty” program for hardened criminals.... Wonderful. Dispatch royal messengers to spread the good word in every corner of the kingdom; and after that send out professional pollsters to record an amazing 66 percent jump in the King’s popularity... then wait a few weeks before announcing the new 10 percent sales tax on ale. That’s how the South got settled. Not the whole story, perhaps, but it goes a long way toward explaining why George Wallace is the Governor of Alabama. He has the same smile as his great-grandfather—a thrice-convicted pig thief from somewhere near Nottingham, who made a small reputation, they say, as a jailhouse lawyer, before he got shipped out. With a bit of imagination you can almost hear the cranky little bastard haranguing his fellow prisoners in London jail, urging them on to revolt: “Lissen here, you poor fools! There’s not much time! Even now—up there in the tower—they’re cookin up some kind of cruel new punishment for us! How much longer will we stand for it? And now they want to ship us across the ocean to work like slaves in a swamp with a bunch of goddamn Hottentots! “We won’t go! It’s asinine! We’ll tear this place apart before we’ll let that thieving old faggot of a king send us off to work next to Africans! “How much more of this misery can we stand, boys? I know you’re fed right up to here with it. I can see it in your eyes— pure misery! And I’m tellin’ you, we don’t have to stand for it!...

Fields: " I'm tendin' bar one time down the lower east-side in New York. A tough paloma comes in there by the name of Chicago Molly. I cautioned her: 'none of your peccadilloes in here'. There was some hot lunch on the bar comprising succotach, philadelphia cream cheese and asparagus with mayonaisse. She dips her mitt down into this melange - I'm yawning at the time - and she hits me right in the mug with it. I jumps over the bar and knocks her down...You were there the night I knocked Chicago Molly down weren't you?" Bartender: " You knocked her down? I was the one that knocked her down". Fields: "Oh yeah ,yes. That's right. He knocked her down. But I was the one start kicking her! So I starts kicking her in the midriff. D'you ever kick a woman in the midriff that had a pair of corsets on?" Customer: "No, I just can't recall any such incident". Fields: "Well I almost broke my great toe. Never had such a painful experience". Customer: "Did she ever come back?" Bartender:"I'll say she came back. She came back a week later and beat the both of us up". Fields: "Yeah but she had another woman with her. Elderly lady with grey hair.

Bel Air (music) Fresh Prince". About how My life upside down backwards. I would like to take a moment. Sitting there I can tell you that I was a prince of a town called Bel Air. Born in West Philadelphia. I spent most of my court date. All is well for fun "Relaxin" Maxi. And every school to take some balls B-. When a few good ones. The problem started in my field. I had to struggle a little afraid of my mother. He said: "You went to live with her aunt and uncle in Bel Air.". I confess and diary But boxed me on my way. He kissed me and I gave him my card. I put my Walkman and said. "I can" I first layer is bad. Champagne glass of orange juice consumption. This is what people who live in Bel Air? Ah, this could be good But wait, I hear you're a prude, all middle class. This is a place where you just need to write a cool cat? I do not I do not know, but I do not understand. I hope you're ready for Prince of Bel-Air. Good landing, and I A police man at my name. However, any attempt to stop. I just moved here I grew up at a high speed, I lost. I whistled for a cab and asked him to come. Put the dice "live" and a mirror. If what I say in the cab are small. But I thought, "No, we must not forget.". -. "I'm home Bel Air". I went to the house about seven or eight. The taxi driver where I wanted to scream. "I do not smell it.". I looked at my kingdom. Eventually, I was able When he sat on the throne, Prince of Bel Air.

I forgive you,” she whispered. “But I’m never staying home again. That was the single most agonizing experience of my life.” “I told you I would win. And then I’d come here. And here I am,” I said, nuzzling her hair. “Will you marry us, Tag?” Henry asked intently, inserting himself back in the conversation. “What?” I wasn’t sure I had heard him right. “Will you marry Millie and be my brother?” he repeated, his expression completely serious. He wasn’t messing around. “We want to be part of Tag Team...” I guess I’d always thought I would marry someday. When I was eighty. Yet Henry was proposing, and it didn’t alarm me in the slightest. In fact, the thought of marrying Millie made my pulse quicken. It made my palms tingle. It made my heart smile so big I could feel the edges of the grin poking me in the ribs. That, or I was starting to feel the hurt from the Santos fight. “Because they both lost so many players to WWII military service, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles combined to become the Steagles during the 1943 season,” Henry recited. “What? The Steagles?” My eyes were on Henry, but I needed to chase Millie down. Henry nodded, straight-faced. “We could do that. We could combine. We could be the Taggersons.” “That’s a very interesting idea, Henry.” I nodded, biting my lip so I wouldn’t laugh. “But I need to convince Millie. I’m not sure she wants to be a Taggerson just yet.” “Andert?” Henry offered another combination, wrinkling his nose, and then shaking his head, as if it didn’t have the same ring. “Give me a minute to see what Millie thinks. Okay?” Henry gave me a solemn thumbs up and sat down on the bottom stair to wait for the verdict