“
Once upon a time, [...]. There was a world that was perfectly made and full of birds and striped creatures and lovely things like honey lilies and star tenzing and weasels—
[...] And this world already had light and shadow, so it didn't need any rouge stars to come and save it, and it had no use for bleeding suns or weeping moons, either, and most important, it had never known war, which is a terrible and wasteful thing that no world needs. It had earth and water, air and fire, all four elements, but it was missing the last element. Love.
[...]
And so this paradise was like a jewel box without a jewel. There it lay, day after day of rose-colored dawns and creature sounds and strange perfumes, and waited for lovers to find it and fill it with their happiness. The end.
[...]
The story is unfinished. The world is still waiting.
”
”
Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
“
You and I my love will always have unfinished business
”
”
M.H.S. Pourri
“
maybe it’s really the possibilities that are easy to fall in love with. Looking at any situation, any relationship, any story, and having the sublime ability to wonder where it will take us is a bit intoxicating, really.
”
”
Rebecca Yarros (The Things We Leave Unfinished)
“
We've written the rough draft of our love together, the draft with loose ends, unfinished edges, mistakes every other page. But every writer knows there's magic in revision, where your work changes from a manuscript into a book. Where intentions, emotions, missed connections coalesce into something complete. It's where what you mean to say becomes what you have said. The characters deepen, the details shine, the prose sparkles. Suddenly, from nothing, you find your story.
”
”
Emily Wibberley (The Roughest Draft)
“
The only thing I'll never have is what I have lost for ever and ever... As long as I live, until I draw my last breath, I shall remember Asel and all those beautiful things that were ours. The day I was to leave I went to the lake and stood on the rise above it. I was saying good-bye to the Tien Shan mountains, to Issyk-Kul. Good-bye, Issyk-Kul, my unfinished song! How I wish I could take you with me, your blue waters and your yellow shores, but I can't, just as I can't take the woman I love with me. Goodbye, Asel. Good-bye, my pretty poplar in a red kerchief! Good-bye, my love, I want you to be happy...
”
”
Chingiz Aitmatov (Piebald Dog Running Along the Shore and Other Stories)
“
I’ve learned that in order to be happy, you first have to have been extremely depressed. Until you have learned to suffer, happiness will never endure. The love that lasts just three years is the love that has neither scaled mountains nor lingered in the depths of despair, but the kind of love that is handed to you on a plate. Love only lasts if everyone involved knows what it costs, and it’s best to pay in advance, or else you might find yourself having to settle the bill later on. We weren’t prepared for happiness, because we weren't yet used to misery. We had grown up in the religion of comfort. You first have to know who you are and who you love. You have to be a finished person to live an unfinished story.
”
”
Frédéric Beigbeder (L'amour dure trois ans (Marc Marronnier, #3))
“
There is no hard and fast line that can be drawn that says: Up to here there was no love; from here on there is now love. Love is a gradual thing, it may take a moment, a month, or a year to come on, and in each two its gradations are different. With some it comes fast, with some it comes slowly. Sometimes one kindles from the other, sometimes both kindle spontaneously. And once in a tragic while one kindles only after the other has already dimmed and gone out, and has to burn forlornly alone.
("Too Nice A Day To Die")
”
”
Cornell Woolrich (Tonight, Somewhere in New York: The Last Stories and an Unfinished Novel)
“
Loving you
felt like leaving a book out in the wind
the pages turned too fast for me to read
I dient get enough time
to adore you
to explore you
to trace your lines with my fingertips
and reread my favorite parts
to live the story I knew we we meant to be
before I knew it
the book was closed
the story was over
- unfinished
”
”
Whitney Hanson (Home)
“
We are unfinished business,
A story left unwritten
A poem without words
And dream with a vision.
”
”
Nikki Rowe
“
A blue sky, a jostling wind, a murky dream, a smiling moon, and a cup of coffee with a song unfinished in those eyes twinkling away a story untold.
”
”
Debatrayee Banerjee
“
It was a brave city, she decided, eyeing them. Brave in its other sense; not courageous, so much as outstanding, commanding. It was too nice a town to die in. Though it had no honeysuckle vines and no balconies and no guitars, it was meant for love. For living and for love, and the two were inseparable; one didn't come without the other.
("Too Nice A Day To Die")
”
”
Cornell Woolrich (Tonight, Somewhere in New York: The Last Stories and an Unfinished Novel)
“
Somewhere buried deep in my heart was a longing for him, for us, for all that had remained unfinished. I only wished that my heart understood the way my mind did, that some questions could never be answered, that some words needed to remain unsaid, that some of our most significant relationships needed to be severed.
”
”
Jacqueline Simon Gunn (Before the Footprints Fade (Hudson River #2))
“
And in just ten seconds of giving our souls to each other, we knew, if not forever, at least tonight we would live as though it was the last day to love.
”
”
Insha Juneja (Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories)
“
You will always be an unfinished part of me.
”
”
Avijeet Das
“
You couldn’t tell kids who’ve been hurt you love them; you had to show them.
”
”
Boo Walker (An Unfinished Story)
“
NINA
Your life is beautiful.
TRIGORIN
I see nothing especially lovely about it. [He looks at his watch] Excuse me, I must go at once, and begin writing again. I am in a hurry. [He laughs] You have stepped on my pet corn, as they say, and I am getting excited, and a little cross. Let us discuss this bright and beautiful life of mine, though. [After a few moments' thought] Violent obsessions sometimes lay hold of a man: he may, for instance, think day and night of nothing but the moon. I have such a moon. Day and night I am held in the grip of one besetting thought, to write, write, write! Hardly have I finished one book than something urges me to write another, and then a third, and then a fourth--I write ceaselessly. I am, as it were, on a treadmill. I hurry for ever from one story to another, and can't help myself. Do you see anything bright and beautiful in that? Oh, it is a wild life! Even now, thrilled as I am by talking to you, I do not forget for an instant that an unfinished story is awaiting me. My eye falls on that cloud there, which has the shape of a grand piano; I instantly make a mental note that I must remember to mention in my story a cloud floating by that looked like a grand piano. I smell heliotrope; I mutter to myself: a sickly smell, the colour worn by widows; I must remember that in writing my next description of a summer evening. I catch an idea in every sentence of yours or of my own, and hasten to lock all these treasures in my literary store-room, thinking that some day they may be useful to me. As soon as I stop working I rush off to the theatre or go fishing, in the hope that I may find oblivion there, but no! Some new subject for a story is sure to come rolling through my brain like an iron cannonball. I hear my desk calling, and have to go back to it and begin to write, write, write, once more. And so it goes for everlasting. I cannot escape myself, though I feel that I am consuming my life. To prepare the honey I feed to unknown crowds, I am doomed to brush the bloom from my dearest flowers, to tear them from their stems, and trample the roots that bore them under foot. Am I not a madman? Should I not be treated by those who know me as one mentally diseased? Yet it is always the same, same old story, till I begin to think that all this praise and admiration must be a deception, that I am being hoodwinked because they know I am crazy, and I sometimes tremble lest I should be grabbed from behind and whisked off to a lunatic asylum. The best years of my youth were made one continual agony for me by my writing. A young author, especially if at first he does not make a success, feels clumsy, ill-at-ease, and superfluous in the world. His nerves are all on edge and stretched to the point of breaking; he is irresistibly attracted to literary and artistic people, and hovers about them unknown and unnoticed, fearing to look them bravely in the eye, like a man with a passion for gambling, whose money is all gone. I did not know my readers, but for some reason I imagined they were distrustful and unfriendly; I was mortally afraid of the public, and when my first play appeared, it seemed to me as if all the dark eyes in the audience were looking at it with enmity, and all the blue ones with cold indifference. Oh, how terrible it was! What agony!
”
”
Anton Chekhov (The Seagull)
“
It's always difficult when someone dies. Things are left unfinished, regrets gape wide open like a wound with no one there to stitch it all together and make everything all right again.
”
”
Jessica Thompson (This is a Love Story)
“
This is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
”
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
We had lived surrounded by books all our married lives. They were our element. We had written them, read for pleasure, amassed mini libraries for particular projects, collected them, organized them into ever shifting categories, and in the end, dwelled inside what we joyfully called our house of books.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
So life is a rectangle then. The length is the years we live and the breadth is the love we get from the people that matter in our lives.
”
”
Ronald Gan (Unfinished Diary: The Story of Lucy Rosalinda)
“
Aeschylus. He wrote: In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom, through the awful grace of God.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
This is love for me, she said. I am not a good woman, she said. I am the end of all things, she said. This was at the beginning. He shook his head. You are life, he said, and I invite you in.
”
”
Amber Sparks (The Unfinished World and Other Stories)
“
I love you, Ayesha. What would I do without you?" Zorawar said in the platonic way he'd always told her that he loved her.
"I love you too, Zorawar. Always have always will." she said ambiguously.
”
”
Insha Juneja (Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories)
“
Spilled Ink
It seemed unfair
And unfinished,
And now it would always be tragic.
Because you kept
Loving them
Even when the story ended.
And there was nowhere
To spill the ink
Of the heartbreak their absence wrote.
”
”
Liz Newman (Of Ruin and Renewal: Poems For Rebuilding)
“
Maybe I'd spent way too long fighting for love, not realizing that all this while, I was fighting my fear of not wanting to lose someone I'd known forever.
Maybe Zara and I too were always meant to be unfinished business.
”
”
Insha Juneja (Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories)
“
We’re going to get a law,” he pledged, “that says every boy and girl in this country, no matter how poor, or the color of their skin, or the region they come from, is going to be able to get all the education they can take.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
I’ve never seen another love like Scarlett and Jameson’s. It was one of those fated lightning strikes, miraculous to see up close, to feel the energy between the two when they were in the same room. That is the love that lives in your veins. I’ve never seen another love like I had for Edward—we were twin flames. But I’ve also never seen another love like I had for Brian—deep and calm and true. Or another love like William’s for Hannah—achingly sweet. But I have seen the same love that I had for William the day I stepped onto that plane. It lives in you. You are the culmination of every lightning strike and twist of fate. Do not settle for the love that hones your edges and turns you brittle and cold, Georgia. Not when there are so many other kinds of love waiting for you. And don’t wait like I did, wasting seventeen years because I’d left one bitter foot in my past. We’re all entitled to our mistakes. When you recognize them for what they are, don’t live there. Life is too short to miss the lightning strike and too long to live it alone. This is where my story ends. I’ll be watching over you to see where yours leads.
”
”
Rebecca Yarros (The Things We Leave Unfinished)
“
Dick always found a bedrock wisdom in the warning of Eugene O’Neill’s Mary Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night: “The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too. We all try to lie out of that, but life won’t let us.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
All of a sudden, he said, ‘You know, there’s something to your game. Republicans are always calling for a return to normalcy, contentment, the status quo. And we’re always pushing forward with our square deals and new deals and fair Americas.
”
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
I am quite uneasy about your dear brother, not having heard from him since he went to Oxford; and am fearful of some misunderstanding. Your kind offices will set all right: he is the only man I ever did or could love, and I trust you will convince him of it.
”
”
Jane Austen (The Complete Works of Jane Austen (All Novels, Short Stories, Unfinished Works, Juvenilia, Letters, Poems, Prayers, Memoirs and Biographies - Fully Illustrated))
“
When I fell in love for the second time, I felt guilty, but I concluded that loving another man doesn't mean that you have to stop loving the first one. I love both of my men equally. In different ways, but equally." She patted her chest. "I have room inside here for both of them.
”
”
Boo Walker (An Unfinished Story)
“
Few will have the greatness to bend history, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and city slums of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that human history is thus shaped.
(Page 281)
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
One thing that a look backward over the vicissitudes of our country’s story suggests is that massive and sweeping change will come. And it can come swiftly. Whether or not it is healing and inclusive change depends on us. As ever, such change will generally percolate from the ground up, as in the days of the American Revolution, the antislavery movement, the progressive movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the women’s movement, the gay rights movement, the environmental movement. From the long view of my life, I see how history turns and veers. The end of our country has loomed many times before. America is not as fragile as it seems.
(Page 9)
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
We're not migrating people,' she said. 'We live in our old houses, and eat on our old dishes and use our old silverware everyday. We're close to the past and comfortable with it. We've surrounded our lives with the pictures of all our relatives hanging on the walls, and we grow up hearing stories about them. It gives these things personality beyond just the material they're made of.
”
”
Tony Horwitz (Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War)
“
personage was formally identified upon entrance: Acclaimed eighty-seven-year-old poet Robert Frost; father of antibiotics Selman Waksman; literature Nobel Prize winner Pearl Buck; astronaut John Glenn; immunologist Thomas Weller, whose virus research enabled the polio vaccine; J. Robert Oppenheimer, Manhattan Project director; celebrated novelists James Baldwin and William Styron—in all, a parade of 127 guests and their spouses.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
As I prepare to leave pages for Wei, I try to listen for his questions. I suspect that our lives have run in parallel, that the two halves of our story can never end without the other. At last, I think I hear him but he bears no questions and no answers. Instead, he tells me that because it is forever unfinished, we have sought each other in the faces of strangers, among the living and the dead, among the mothers and the fathers, and he tells me that his journey appears everywhere I look. Love, he tells me, like devotion, leaves everything unfinished.
”
”
Madeleine Thien (The Book of Records)
“
Sixty years after the memories of the changes and upheavals of the Sixties have begun to fade, been half-forgotten or become misunderstood, my project with Dick might add our voices … to the task of restoring a “living history” of that decade, allowing us to see what opportunities were seized, what mistakes were made, what chances were lost, and what light might be cast on our own fractured time. Too often, memories of assassination, violence, and social turmoil have obscured the greatest illumination of the Sixties, the spark of communal idealism and belief that kindled social justice and love for a more inclusive vision of America.
(Pages 404-405)
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
Do you know what makes me the happiest?
When I see somebody's dream getting the light of morn.
When I see the happy giggle of a child with the most enchanting twinkle in that eye.
When I see the breaking dawn to watch the rising sun.
When I see a smile walking along the horizon painting the crimson rays of a setting sun.
When I see a sobbing heart finally taking a flight to a deep unknown within the canvas of its soul.
When I see the rain touch the earth and caress its voice in a mirthful melody of stories unfinished.
When I see a rainbow dancing along a silver lining of a roaring storm.
When I see the radiance on a freckled face of an old woman holding the hand of her forever old man.
When I see the moist mist of that coffee slowly becoming the poison of my muse.
When I see my wandering heart falling in love with beautiful lands and strangers of soulful cord.
When I see how Life is beautiful in all its breathtaking shortness marked in moments of happy surprise lulling across the door of my distant dream clutched in a canopy of dreams lived.
And now when I see that beguiling smile of Life, I know how happiest that stardust shines which twinkles in my eye and the soul of my distant dream.
”
”
Debatrayee Banerjee
“
He could tell Fleming he was a musician but he could not communicate what the music said to him or said to the people he played it for. The music told itself, it made some obscure connection for which there were no words. The music was its own story, but a man could dip into the vast reservoir of folk and blues lines and phrases and images and construct his own story: though upon performing it and without it losing any relevance to his own life it now belonged to the audience as well. It was something he could not fathom. The old songs with juryrigged verses like bodies cobbled up out of bones from a thousand skeletons. Songs about death and lost love and rambling down the line because sometimes down the line was the only place left. Songs that treated the most desperate of loss with a dark sardonic humour. "I'm going where the climate suits my clothes", the song said, not saying the frustration and despair that created it, saying that in the sheer lonesomeness of the sound, in the old man's driving banjo. There was an eerie timelessness about it that said it could have been written a thousand years ago, or it could have been an unfinished song about events that had not yet played themselves out.
”
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William Gay (Provinces of Night)
“
You and I will always be unfinished business.
”
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Insha Juneja (Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories)
“
The dialogue this morning was Cicero's comparison of various types of friends: useful friends with whom we have transactional relations, amusing friends with whom we share pleasure and games, and those rare friends that Cicero calls "another self" with whom we share soul secrets and deepest feelings. p289
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
That’s the kind of love that stories are written about, Georgia. The kind that makes people believe it has to be out there for them, too.
”
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Rebecca Yarros (The Things We Leave Unfinished)
“
But maybe it’s really the possibilities that are easy to fall in love with. Looking at any situation, any relationship, any story, and having the sublime ability to wonder where it will take us is a bit intoxicating, really. There’s a rush every time I load a blank sheet of paper. Like a first kiss from a first love.
”
”
Rebecca Yarros (The Things We Leave Unfinished)
“
A human being lives out not only his personal life as an individual,” remarked Thomas Mann in The Magic Mountain, “but also, consciously or subconsciously, the lives of his epoch and his contemporaries.
”
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
The epic, rare love story in this room isn’t Scarlett and Jameson. It’s you and me.
”
”
Rebecca Yarros (The Things We Leave Unfinished)
“
How could I have been so stupid? I know better than to listen to experts. They always have their own agenda. All my life I’ve known it, and yet I still barreled ahead.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
It was true that after eighty, he had begun to suffer the typical infirmities of old age: He needed more sleep, a pacemaker regulated his heartbeat, his balance was compromised
”
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
Though total agreement between the Executive and Congress is impossible, total respect is important. I am proud to be among my colleagues of the Congress whose legacy to their trust is their loyalty to their nation. I am not unaware of inner emotions of the new Members of this body tonight. Twenty-eight years ago I felt as you do now. You will soon learn that you are among men whose first love is their country, men who try each day to do, as best they can, what they believe is right. “What an
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
Anyhow, I've begun on the story we discussed. I will not refer specifically to what you said, but I've decided that it will have as its author Hawthorne Abendsen, the novelist in my novel MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE who wrote THE GRASSHOPPER LIES HEAVY. I wrote & wrote . . . after all, I wrote my 4th novel EYE IN THE SKY in two weeks, so this merely shows I'm in love with what I'm doing. The title of Abendsen's yarn is, "A Man For No Countries," because he is unwanted in the USA where the Asshole Axis rule, and certainly not in Europe where Germany rules from . . . I did bio notes, the uncorrected carbons of which I'm enclosing; they were improved in a second draft, and can/will be cut as needed. And, as to the story, I finished the holographic first draft last night about the time our tomcat Pinky wants indoors to be fed, which is quite late, and at which time nothing, even Pinky, gets me out of bed. It is a short story, but I think a lot of it, Phil. I really do, and when I turn out a lousy one I usually know it and the other way around.
I'll send you a carbon of the final, not of the rough, since the rough is in holo. Now, a technical problem. To whom do I send the yarn when I'm done? By contract, it must be to Scott Meredith; that is determined by law. But my own name must be on it, on the far left upper corner, not under the title, so he can see who sent it, and hence pay me. That is, receive pay. Who does pay, by the way? Ed Ferman or whoever buys it (if anyone)? Does it just go onto the market like all stories, OR—and this is crucial, maybe—should I mention to Scott Meredith that you should be involved . . . without mentioning certain details held in confidence between us? How do I handle it? I will sell it, in any case; I wrote MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE in 1961 and ever since "they" have begged (well, asked me) to do more as a sequel. This story is in fact a follow-up, of Abendsen's life since, besides being an intrinsic plot-idea-theme story. So it'll sell, and Ed Ferman does like my stuff; he has commissioned a set of three stories from me, the last three I have done, including one for FINAL STATE or EDGE or whatever with Malzberg, and so would tend to want to buy it. So advise me, as I type up the final. And thanks for getting my literary ass in gear; God bless, Phil. [The story was never completed or published.]
”
”
Philip K. Dick (The Selected Letters, 1974)
“
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance….
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
James Reeb was murdered by the irrelevancy of a church that will stand amid social evil and serve as a taillight rather than a headlight, an echo rather than a voice.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
The Great Society would be built on the belief that America’s affluence must work for all its citizens.
”
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
In reply, Johnson said, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
I’m an old guy after all. If I have any wisdom to dispense, I’d better start dispensing.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
In that Alaska speech, Kennedy had declared that the New Frontier did not suggest a geographical boundary line, but rather, a spirit of mind that had built the country, a people who did not ask for things to be done for them, but wanted to take action themselves. “This is the call of the New Frontier. It is not what I promise I will do; it is what I ask you to join me in doing.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
Some things you have to fight for, Georgia. You can’t just walk away and leave it unfinished when it gets too complicated. If I could fly off and fight the Nazis to win your love, I would. But all I’ve got to battle with are your demons, and they’re kicking my ass. Keep that in mind while you’re reading those endings, the good and the…poignant. The epic, rare love story in this room isn’t Scarlett and Jameson. It’s you and me.
”
”
Rebecca Yarros (The Things We Leave Unfinished)
“
[Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter to his law clerk Richard Goodwin]
'Our job is to enforce the law, including the Constitution,' the Justice repeatedly said. 'We have nothing to do with your abstract notions of justice or liberty. Only with what the law provides. Trample the law for your own ends, Dick, and the time will come when you’ll be trampled under someone else’s ends.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
But maybe it’s really the possibilities that are easy to fall in love with. Looking at any situation, any relationship, any story, and having the sublime ability to wonder where it will take us is a bit intoxicating, really.
”
”
Rebecca Yarros (The Things We Leave Unfinished)
“
The New York Times’s Tom Wicker deemed Johnson’s speech “remarkable in the history of the presidency, as well as of the Civil Rights Movement.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
For the first time in history, we had a chance to construct a society more concerned with the quality of our goals than the quantity of our goods.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
He never reached Dick’s favorite line, “If the President does not himself wage the struggle for equal rights—if he stands above the battle—then the battle will be inevitably lost.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
my unofficial role was to be available to listen to the president when he wanted to talk. Evenings would often find us in the little sitting room next to the Oval Office. There, Johnson liked to relax with a drink and talk… and talk and talk. Perhaps because I had joined the White House staff shortly after
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
Saturday was the day of preparation for the funeral. Jackie had issued personal instructions that everyone was to walk behind the casket on the way to the funeral. She also wanted bagpipers to be at the graves and play over the hills—Air Force bagpipers. Arrangements were made to bring the Black Watch bagpipers. The Irish Guard was to come over.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
his challenge to the young people to battle the “danger of futility, the belief there is nothing one man or woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
Few will have the greatness to bend history, but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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Dreams are the unfinished wings of our souls.
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Simon Van Booy (The Secret Lives of People in Love: Stories)
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Part 1. My Life Story.
- If I can do it, so can you-
I was born and lived in one of the most oldest and most beautiful cities in Albania. for 23 years I lived under the communist regime, where everyone was poor, there was no rich people beside the Elite group who dictate the country. Since I was little girl I dreamed of fairy tale life. But for some reason no one was supportive of my dreams. It looked like they were enjoying watching us living in poverty and keep our heads down, for instance I remember when I was in 5th grade I told my literature teacher "When I get older I want to be a beautician." With a smire on her face she said "You are going to be just like your mother, keep having kids in a row" At that time I did not understood what she meant, but I did not expected that answer from an "educated" person, especially your teacher. As I got older I started to isolate myself from all the negative people until one day I asked my uncle to help me to get in a beauty college, he knew people in town that's why, I did not wanted to believe he respond. Even today I can hear his words whisper in my ears, telling me "Beauty college is not for poor children, education is only for rich kids" But that did not stopped me either, I told myself "No one can tell me what I can and can't do" They just motivated me to prove them wrong. Poor children can go to college. So I decided to make a very big move my that would either end it my life or could change my life for ever. Sep 2, 1990 I had it enough of that hell place, communist regime and all the negative people.I decided to leave everyone behind me and move forward in life, I decided to escape the communist and followed my dreams. I was also escaped from army who was chasing to kill us, but mighty God was with us. We made the local news saying "Two young girls were killed today by army forces escaping the borders" but I made it alive to Yugoslavia, I spend almost seven months there in concentration camp. There I meet the love of my life also, we dated for five months, until his visa was approved to come in US, two months later I come to state on March of 1991. New place, new chapter in my life, two weeks later got united, neither of us spoke English, it was very hard to find jobs, we manage to get a job in a local restaurant as a dishwasher and me as a bustable, at that time I was very I found a happy, so I did it with smile on my face. We were living at my husband's cousins unfinished basement. Yes we were sharing a single / twin size bed, we had to saved money so we can get our own apartment, we had nothing insite site. I remember when the manager showed us the appartment, it was green shaggy carpet, I told my husband. "Honey the carpet is thick enough, we don't need mattress to sleep on it, we can sleep on the carpet" later on a co-worker give us some household stuff to start our life with. Later that year our 1st child /daughter was born, two months later we get married in a local Albania church. Life was getting way better than living under the communist regime, later on we have two more children. We decided to bring my parents here so they can help us, I can get back to work or go to school . On April 1, 1998 my father come, we picked him at airport, with tears on his eye he was looking the street lights outside of the car window and said, "America is beautiful country, is land of dreams,....when I die please bury me here and not in Albania" By that time have I learning enough English to continued my education. I went to beauty school. two years later I graduated and got the state license. Yahhhh my dreams start coming true, remember I told you I always wanted to be a beautician. I found a job in a local salon, couple months later I was promoted to a salon manager. I did it for me and not for them who did not believed on me, As I said " I never cared
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Zybejta (Beta) Metani' Marashi
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Part 1. My Life Story.
- If I can do it, so can you-
I was born and lived in one of the most oldest and most beautiful cities in Albania. for 23 years I lived under the communist regime, where everyone was poor, there was no rich people beside the Elite group who dictate the country. Since I was little girl I dreamed of fairy tale life. But for some reason no one was supportive of my dreams. It looked like they were enjoying watching us living in poverty and keep our heads down, for instance I remember when I was in 5th grade I told my literature teacher "When I get older I want to be a beautician." With a smire on her face she said "You are going to be just like your mother, keep having kids in a row" At that time I did not understood what she meant, but I did not expected that answer from an "educated" person, especially your teacher. As I got older I started to isolate myself from all the negative people until one day I asked my uncle to help me to get in a beauty college, he knew people in town that's why, I did not wanted to believe he respond. Even today I can hear his words whisper in my ears, telling me "Beauty college is not for poor children, education is only for rich kids" But that did not stopped me either, I told myself "No one can tell me what I can and can't do" They just motivated me to prove them wrong. Poor children can go to college. So I decided to make a very big move my that would either end it my life or could change my life for ever. Sep 2, 1990 I had it enough of that hell place, communist regime and all the negative people.I decided to leave everyone behind me and move forward in life, I decided to escape the communist and followed my dreams. I was also escaped from army who was chasing to kill us, but mighty God was with us. We made the local news saying "Two young girls were killed today by army forces escaping the borders" but I made it alive to Yugoslavia, I spend almost seven months there in concentration camp. There I meet the love of my life also, we dated for five months, until his visa was approved to come in US, two months later I come to state on March of 1991. New place, new chapter in my life, two weeks later got united, neither of us spoke English, it was very hard to find jobs, we manage to get a job in a local restaurant as a dishwasher and me as a bustable, at that time I was very I found a happy, so I did it with smile on my face. We were living at my husband's cousins unfinished basement. Yes we were sharing a single / twin size bed, we had to saved money so we can get our own apartment, we had nothing insite site. I remember when the manager showed us the appartment, it was green shaggy carpet, I told my husband. "Honey the carpet is thick enough, we don't need mattress to sleep on it, we can sleep on the carpet" later on a co-worker give us some household stuff to start our life with. Later that year our 1st child /daughter was born, two months later we get married in a local Albania church. Life was getting way better than living under the communist regime, later on we have two more children. We decided to bring my parents here so they can help us, I can get back to work or go to school . On April 1, 1998 my father come, we picked him at airport, with tears on his eye he was looking the street lights outside of the car window and said, "America is beautiful country, is land of dreams,....when I die please bury me here and not in Albania" By that time have I learning enough English to continued my education. I went to beauty school. two years later I graduated and got the state license. Yahhhh my dreams start coming true, remember I told you I always wanted to be a beautician. I found a job in a local salon, couple months later I was promoted to a salon manager. I did it for me and not for them who did not believed on me, As I said " I never cared
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Zybejta (Beta) Metani' Marashi
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Courage as you define it is to write the story of your heart, the story that formed while your life came as a mixture of agony and amazement. Courage as you define it is to feel your unfelt self and let the feelings be penned down so it maybe someone's else's survival guide when they have lost their own. Courage as you define it is to keep believing for there are still some unfinished poems in this world. Courage as you define it is to keep walking for there are still some unwritten stories you need to pen before you surrender to the end.....
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Jayita Bhattacharjee
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It was destiny which made them meet and love which kept them together. Together, they lived a
life of their choice and gave companionship a new meaning, to complete a story that was left unfinished decades ago.
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Namrata Gupta (The Full Circle)
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"Not everyone can find this book." Old Johan tapped the cover. "Only people who have a connection to this place. Her story isn't done yet."
Hopefulness surged. His life had been all but perfect. Surrounded by his loved ones, never wanting for anything--- why would he have needed to hope? But he could only describe the soaring feeling in his chest as hope. Hope that he wasn't wrong about their connection. Hope that she would someday return here unattached. Hope that their story wasn't done.
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Amy E. Reichert (Once Upon a December)
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I have big dreams and big goals. But also big limitations, which means III never reach the big goals unless I have the wisdom to recognize the chains that bind me. Only then will I be able to figure out a way to work within them instead of ignoring them or naively wishing they'll cease to exist. I'm on a perennial quest to find balance. Writing helps me do that.
To quote Neruda: Tengo que acordarme de todos, recoger las briznas, los hilos del acontecer harapiento (I have to remember everything, collect the wisps, the threads of untidy happenings).
That line is ME. But my memory is slipping and that's one of the
scariest aspects about all this. How can I tell my story, how can I create a narrative around my life, if I cant even remember the details?
But I do want to tell my story, and so I write. I write because I want my parents to understand me. I write to leave something behind for them, for my brother Micah, for my boyfriend Jack, and for my extended family and friends, so I won't just end up as ashes scattered in the ocean and nothing else.
Curiously, the things I write in my journal are almost all bad:
the letdowns. the uncertainties. the anxieties. the loneliness. The good stuff I keep in my head and heart, but that proves an unreliable way of holding on because time eventually steals all memories-and if it doesn't completely steal them, it distorts them, sometimes beyond recognition, or the emotional quality accompanying the moment just dissipates.
Many of the feelings I write about are too difficult to share while I'm alive, so I am keeping everything in my journal password-protected until the end. When I die I want my mom to edit these pages to ensure they are acceptable for publication-culling through years of writing, pulling together what will resonate, cutting references that might be hurtful. My hope is that my writing will offer insight for people living with, or loving someone with, chronic illness.
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Mallory Smith (Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life)
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I have big dreams and big goals. But also big limitations, which means I'II never reach the big goals unless I have the wisdom to recognize the chains that bind me. Only then will I be able to figure out a way to work within them instead of ignoring them or naively wishing they'll cease to exist. I'm on a perennial quest to find balance. Writing helps me do that.
To quote Neruda: Tengo que acordarme de todos, recoger las briznas, los hilos del acontecer harapiento (I have to remember everything, collect the wisps, the threads of untidy happenings). That line is ME. But my memory is slipping and that's one of the scariest aspects about all this. How can I tell my story, how can I create a narrative around my life, if I cant even remember the details?
But I do want to tell my story, and so I write.
I write because I want my parents to understand me. I write to leave something behind for them, for my brother Micah, for my boyfriend Jack, and for my extended family and friends, so I won't just end up as ashes scattered in the ocean and nothing else.
Curiously, the things I write in my journal are almost all bad: the letdowns. the uncertainties. the anxieties. the loneliness. The good stuff I keep in my head and heart, but that proves an unreliable way of holding on because time eventually steals all memories-and if it doesn't completely steal them, it distorts them, sometimes beyond recognition, or the emotional quality accompanying the moment just dissipates.
Many of the feelings I write about are too difficult to share while I'm alive, so I am keeping everything in my journal password-protected until the end. When I die I want my mom to edit these pages to ensure they are acceptable for publication-culling through years of writing, pulling together what will resonate, cutting references that might be hurtful. My hope is that my writing will offer insight for people living with, or loving someone with, chronic illness.
”
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Mallory Smith (Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life)
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There is no timeline you must follow. You’re not too late . . . you’re not too early . . . you are just where you should be at this moment in your life, so relax. There’s plenty of time to find love, there’s plenty of time to get married, there’s plenty of time to live happily ever after. And it starts by living happily now by embracing this version of yourself—this wild, unsettled, unfinished version of yourself. Every moment of your life and your journey is so precious and sacred, and it’s so very, very okay that it is completely unique and entirely your own. You don’t have to catch up to anyone or wait for anyone to catch up to you. You can simply go your own way and trust that everything meant for you will come in its perfect time, in its perfect way. You can stop viewing dating as something you have to do and start viewing it as something you get to do. You can stop frantically searching for “the one” and allow yourself to have a little fun. Breathe. Relax. Trust. Let go. Laugh. Smile. Live. Your life is unfolding just as it should . . . so stop trying to skip ahead to the end, and enjoy the chapter you’re in. And while you’re at it, remember that finding love is merely one chapter of your story. There is still an entire book of other crazy, beautiful, wild, funny, colorful, meaningful adventures to be lived.
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Mandy Hale (Don't Believe the Swipe: Finding Love without Losing Yourself)
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I am a fighter. With a dream, diminished. And, I am a writer. With a story, unfinished - Without You
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Farah Ayaad (Coming Home)
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We’ve written the rough draft of our love together, the draft with loose ends, unfinished edges, mistakes every other page. But every writer knows there’s magic in revision, where your work changes from a manuscript into a book. Where intentions, emotions, missed connections coalesce into something complete. It’s where what you mean to say becomes what you have said. The characters deepen, the details shine, the prose sparkles. Suddenly, from nothing, you find your story.
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Emily Wibberley (The Roughest Draft)
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is not what I promise I will do; it is what I ask you to join me in doing.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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It was our turn to live out our own epic love story, and I treasured every single minute of it.
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Rebecca Yarros (The Things We Leave Unfinished)
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And the demeaning bag of tricks and tests to which Black applicants were subjected were not simply formidable, but absurd and contemptible. “How many bubbles in a bar of soap?” applicants were asked. “How many seeds in a watermelon?
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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This beautiful mystery woman had a very white complexion and wore her blond, silky hair tied back from her face in a braid, which she had tucked under her fur coat. As she got closer, I could see that her facial features were not detailed in the way of an earthly human face. She had beautiful, small eyes and a very small nose with a tip that somehow looked unfinished. It was the same with her tiny mouth, something about the corners looked unfinished as well.
I was frozen and I did not know what to do. Honestly, my mind stopped functioning and seemed to travel far away, wandering over my head in search of an explanation or an answer for this apparition. And then this beautiful mystery woman arrived in front of me and inexplicably hugged me very tight, with unusual passion for a stranger.
With what felt like the deepest, genuine love, the beautiful mystery woman placed her forehead very tightly against the right side of my neck and then she raised her head until her warm right cheek was tight against my right cheek, so tight I could feel the bones of her face. Her left arm held me tight around my waist, while her right arm was over my left shoulder, squeezing me from behind my neck. She did not say ‘hi’ or any word; she just kept holding me tight that I started to feel her body heat.
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Frank Moses (Cactus: Life Story and Fate, With an Unexpected Twist)
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Along one stretch of wall I found a bookcase, still miraculously erect, having come through the fire I cannot say how; it was rotted by water and consumed by termites. In it there were still a few pages. Other remnants I found by rummaging in the ruins below. Mine was a poor harvest, but I spent a whole day reaping it, as if from those disecta membra of the library a message might reach me. Some fragments of parchment had faded, others permitted the glimpse of an image’s shadow, or the ghost of one or two more words. At times I found pages where whole sentences were legible; more often, intact bindings, protected by what had once been metal studs…Ghosts of books, apparently intact on the outside but consumed within; yet sometimes a half page had been saved, an in joy was discernible, a title.
I collected every relic I could find, filling two traveling sacks with them, abandoning things useful to me in order to save that miserable hoard.
Along the return journey and afterward at Melk, I spent many, many hours trying to decipher those remains. Often from a word or a surviving image I could recognize what the work had been. When I found, in time, other copies of those books, I studied them with love, as if destiny had left me this bequest, as if having identified the destroyed copy were a clear sign from heaven that said to me: Tolle et lege. At the end of my patient reconstruction, I had before me a kind of lesser library, a symbol of the greater, vanished one: a library made up of fragments, quotations, unfinished sentences, amputated stumps of books.
The more I reread this list the more I am convinced it is the result of chance and contains no message. But these incomplete pages have accompanied me through all the life that has been left me to live since then; I have often consulted them like an oracle, and I have almost had the impression that what I have written on these pages, which you will now read, unknown reader, is only a cento, a figured hymn, an immense acrostic that says nothing and repeats nothing but what those fragments have suggested to me, nor do I know whether thus far I have been speaking of them or they have spoken through my mouth. But whichever of the two possibilities may be correct, the more I repeat to myself the story that has emerged from them, the less I manage to understand whether in it there is design that goes beyond the natural sequence of the events and the times that connect them. And it is a hard thing for this old monk, on the threshold of death, not to know whether the letter he has written contains some hidden meaning, or more than one, or many, or none at all.
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Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose)
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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company secrets. Presumably a man enters public life to serve the nation. The oath taken by every high officer of the nation, elected or appointed, is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, not an
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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Our job is to enforce the law, including the Constitution,’ the Justice repeatedly said. ‘We have nothing to do with your abstract notions of justice or liberty. Only with what the law provides. Trample the law for your own ends, Dick, and the time will come when you’ll be trampled under someone else’s ends.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union.” Even the smallest of grandchildren listened quietly, mesmerized
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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When prospective students tour the University of Michigan today, there is a bronze plaque at the entrance of the Michigan Union: “Here at 2:00 a.m. on October 14, 1960, John Fitzgerald Kennedy first defined the Peace Corps. He stood at the place marked by the medallion and was cheered by a large and enthusiastic student audience for the Hope and Promise his idea gave the world.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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Why do you cage me once again?
Set me free in the winds, let me regain.
This is a love story, so pure, so true,
A dream unfinished, incomplete without you.
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Tawqeer Peer
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revelation of warm possibility. Organizers had filled the Dodd Gym with seven hundred people. Before Kennedy spoke, six-year-old Ellen Anich crossed the stage, carrying a bouquet of flowers she had brought to present to the candidate’s wife, Jackie Kennedy. That six-year-old girl was now sixty-eight when I tracked her down for a conversation. “A bunch of grayheads sitting around the table thought it would be cute to have a little girl deliver the flowers. My uncle, Tom Anich, was active in Democratic politics,” Ellen explained, “so I was chosen. We had no money. Everything I wore belonged to a rich girl across the street. That day, I practiced handing things over…. But when Kennedy reached down to accept the flowers in his wife’s absence, I held back, confused since they were meant for his wife.” Kennedy explained that his wife was pregnant and resting. “My mom’s going to have a baby, too,” young Ellen announced. “I promise if you give them to me, I will make sure she gets them,” Kennedy assured her—so finally, she surrendered the roses. The crowd roared with good-natured laughter, sending the night in a positive direction. The high spirits continued as Kennedy spoke of a Democratic bill Eisenhower had vetoed, the Area Redevelopment Bill. He pledged that he would work for its passage so that Ashland and other depressed communities throughout the country would receive the aid they deserved from their government. On September 24, 1963, Kennedy returned to Ashland, this time as president of the United States. The harbor had not been cleaned up and the grave economic situation had not improved. As president he had passed and signed the Area Redevelopment Bill, but its modest funds had not filtered down to Ashland.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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Some have called upon us to mute or stifle dissent in the name of patriotism and the national interest. It is an argument which monstrously misconceives the nature and process and the greatest strength of American democracy…. It is not our privilege but our duty as patriots, to write, to speak, to organize, to oppose any President and any party and any policy at any time which we believe threatens the grandeur of this nation and the well-being of its people. This is such a time.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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We've written the rough draft of our love together, the draft with loose ends, unfinished edges, mistakes every other page. But every writer knows there's magic in revisions, where your work changes from a manuscript into a book. Where intentions, emotions, missed connections coalesce into something complete. It's where what you mean to say becomes what you have said. The characters deepen, the details shine, the prose sparkles. Suddenly, from nothing, you can find your story. We're in the revision now, Nathan and me. The second draft. Each next one will only improve, becoming more nuanced, more honest, more profound. More us.
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Austin Siegemund-Broka (The Roughest Draft)
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Kennedy hustled back to Washington to control the damage and “clarify” his position. While not abandoning his original proposal, he sought to
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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Justice Frankfurter told me, when I had been attacked in an editorial, there were two kinds of pain in public life. One was the deep continuing pain of serious emotional blows. The other, the pain of immediate controversy, was like a toothache. It was terrible, but once fixed, you forgot it ever existed. You have already known the first kind. This is the second.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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He is right. Unlike my other songs, this one is happy. Hopeful even. Like a never-ending epilogue of our unfinished love story. A love story that has only just begun, with the best parts still left to be written.
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Lauren Asher (Love Unwritten (Lakefront Billionaires, #2))
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He was constantly worried that if the justices imposed their own social or political views, the authority of the court itself would be chipped away. His institutional conservatism left a permanent mark on me. “ ‘Our job is to enforce the law, including the Constitution,’ the Justice repeatedly said. ‘We have nothing to do with your abstract notions of justice or liberty. Only with what the law provides. Trample the law for your own ends, Dick, and the time will come when you’ll be trampled under someone else’s ends.’
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
“
is not our privilege but our duty as patriots, to write, to speak, to organize, to oppose any President and any party and any policy at any time which we believe threatens the grandeur of this nation and the well-being of its people. This is such a time.
”
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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lamented how Lyndon had erased his own legacy as well as Dick’s when he canceled that book of the messages and speeches of the Great Society. “You’ve returned the favor with a vengeance!” Dick listened thoughtfully. “I was in the midst of a political battle,” he said, “and as we’ve well established, I had politics in the blood.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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The government of the United States is not a private club or college fraternity. Its policies are not private oaths or company secrets. Presumably a man enters public life to serve the nation. The oath taken by every high officer of the nation, elected or appointed, is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, not an Administration, a political party or a man. “Dissenters are sometimes accused of demeaning the presidency. That office should demand respect. Its dignity, however, flows not from private right or title or the man who occupies it, but solely from the fact that its occupant is chosen by the people of the United States. It is their office, and if they, or any among them, feel that it is wrongly used, then it is their obligation to speak.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)
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You know, there’s something to your game. Republicans are always calling for a return to normalcy, contentment, the status quo. And we’re always pushing forward with our square deals and new deals and fair Americas.
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Doris Kearns Goodwin (An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s)