Radiant Office Quotes

How fitting an end to us. You can't love me, and I can't look at you every day and pretend to not love you,

But I awoke at three, feeling terribly sad, and feeling rebelliously that I didn't want to study sadness, madness, melancholy, and despair. I wanted to study triumphs, the rediscoveries of love, all that I know in the world to be decent, radiant, and clear. Then the word "love", the impulse to love, welled up in me somewhere above my middle. Love seemed to flow from me in all directions, abundant as water--love for Cora, love for Flora, love for all my friends and neighbors, love for Penumbra. This tremendous flow of vitality could not be contained within its spelling, and I seemed to seize a laundry marker and write "luve" on the wall. I wrote "luve" on the staircase, "luve" on the pantry, "luve" on the oven, the washing machine, and the coffeepot, and when Cora came down in the morning (I would be nowhere around) everywhere she looked she would read "luve", "luve", "luve." Then I saw a green meadow and a sparkling stream. On the ridge there were thatched-roof cottages and a square church tower, so I knew it must be England. I climbed up from the meadow to the streets of the village, looking for the cottage where Cora and Flora would be waiting for me. There seemed to have been some mistake. No one knew their names. I asked at the post office, but the answer here was the same. Then it occurred to me that they would be at the manor house. How stupid I had been! I left the village and walked up a sloping lawn to a Georgian house, where a butler let me in. The squire was entertaining. There were twenty-five or thirty people in the hall, drinking sherry. I took a glass from a tray and looked through the gathering for Flora and my wife, but they were not there. Then I thanked my host and walked down the broad lawn, back to the meadow and the sparkling brook, where I lay on the grass and fell into a sweet sleep.

I have never forgotten these visitors, or ceased to marvel at them, at how they have gone on from strength to strength, continuing to lighten our darkness, and to guide, counsel and instruct us; on occasion, momentarily abashed, but always ready to pick themselves up, put on their cardboard helmets, mount Rosinante, and go galloping off on yet another foray on behalf of the down-trodden and oppressed. They are unquestionably one of the wonders of the age, and I shall treasure till I die as a blessed memory the spectacle of them travelling with radiant optimism through a famished countryside, wandering in happy bands about squalid, over-crowded towns, listening with unshakeable faith to the fatuous patter of carefully trained and indoctrinated guides, repeating like schoolchildren a multiplication table, the bogus statistics and mindless slogans endlessly intoned to them. There, I would think, an earnest office-holder in some local branch of the League of Nations Union, there a godly Quaker who once had tea with Gandhi, there an inveigher against the Means Test and the Blasphemy Laws, there a staunch upholder of free speech and human rights, there an indomitable preventer of cruelty to animals; there scarred and worthy veterans of a hundred battles for truth, freedom and justice--all, all chanting the praises of Stalin and his Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It was as though a vegetarian society had come out with a passionate plea for cannibalism, or Hitler had been nominated posthumously for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I don’t know about love, baby. But I do think I should hate you forever. For being east to my west, for being day to my night; we shall never reconcile and so I hate you.

...For all the profound human modesty of Comrade Stalin,he will have to tolerate our outpourings of love and loyalty to him[applause],because not only we,who live and work under his direction,but all the working people in our land,tie their hopes for a radiant future for mankind to his name.[Applause] 'Listen,why should I read this? Let's go' Gleb repeated. All right.All right. But what do you think? -He's flunky! -But he wrote The Quiet Don,a great novel. In the twenties there was doubt about his authorship.They even had a special commission to investigate. I heard something about that. Akimov told me.The read author was some White officer.But no one would acknowledge that...If The Quiet Don is a work of genius,the author cannot be flunky.As your beloved Pushkin said,dearie,genius and evil are incompatible. Not every genius can overcome fear.And Sholokhov is no genius.

The cities will be part of the country; I shall live 30 miles from my office in one direction, under a pine tree; my secretary will live 30 miles away from it too, in the other direction, under another pine tree. We shall both have our own car. We shall use up tires, wear out road surfaces and gears, consume oil and gasoline. All of which will necessitate a great deal of work … enough for all. —LE CORBUSIER, THE RADIANT CITY (1967)

It also had extraordinary acoustics: in the hush of the small hours, a goods truck smashing into a pothole sounded like an explosion, and the fantastic howl of a passing motorbike once caused Rachel to vomit with terror. Around the clock, ambulances sped eastward on West 23rd Street with a sobbing escort of police motorcycles. Sometimes I confused the cries of the sirens with my son's night-time cries. I would leap out of bed and go to his bedroom and helplessly kiss him, even though my rough face sometimes woke him and I'd have to stay with him and rub his tiny rigid back until he fell asleep once more. Afterwards I slipped out onto the balcony and stood there like a sentry. The pallor of the so-called hours of darkness was remarkable. Directly to the north of the hotel, a succession of cross-streets glowed as if each held a dawn. The tail lights, the coarse blaze of deserted office buildings, the lit storefronts, the orange fuzz of the street lanterns: all this garbage of light had been refined into a radiant atmosphere that rested in a low silver heap over Midtown and introduced to my mind the mad thought that the final twilight was upon New York.

I have had time enough to get over you. All that love has alchemized into hate. To hate you hurts less.

I observed, as I entered, that the office is designed to impress and intimidate. My eyes took in the blue presidential seal, embedded directly in the center of the oval rug. Rays of gold and bronze radiated out from it across the rug and projected onto the vertically striped walls. Between my meeting in May and my first President's Daily Brief in September, President Obama would swap out the radiant rug for a solid, cream colored one with a white presidential seal. His more muted color scheme projected a still confident but more relaxed commander in chief, one who embraced the power of the office but equally exhibited the humility inherent in his character ... When I was finally lead to the Oval Office entrance, I saw President Obama standing at a credenza in front of his scheduler's desk, casually looking over the front pages of a pile of newspapers. He looked up, gave me his patented smile, stepped over, and shook my hand. I have no doubt that his greeting was choreographed to put me at ease.