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People are so busy dreaming the American Dream, fantasizing about what they could be or have a right to be, that they're all asleep at the switch. Consequently we are living in the Age of Human Error.

Florence King

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Florence King
Age: 80 †
Born: 1936
Born: January 5
Died: 2016
Died: January 6
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Washington
District of Columbia
Florence Virginia King
Living
Dreaming
Dream
Error
Human
Errors
Humans
Busy
Right
Mistake
Fantasizing
People
Literature
Consequently
Age
Switch
American
Asleep

More quotes by Florence King

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Real feminism is spinsterhood. It's time America admitted that old maids give all women a good name.
Florence King
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I have a professional acquaintance whose recent eyelid job has left her with a permanent expression of such poleaxed astonishment that she looks at all times as if she had just read one of my books.
Florence King
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I don't mind being regarded as perverted and unnatural, but I would die if people thought I was a Democrat.
Florence King
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Each time a mediocre singer performs, he is saying, in effect, This is good enough for you. The audience, thrust into that familiar American mood of knowing something is wrong but not knowing what it is, unconsciously absorbs the insult and projects it back onto the mediocre performer in the form of inattention, rudeness and noise.
Florence King
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In its purest sense, nicknaming is an elitist ritual practiced by those who cherish hierarchy. For preppies it's a smoke signal that allows Bunny to tell Pooky that they belong to the same tribe, while among the good old boys it serves the cause of masculine dominance by identifying Bear and Wrecker as Alpha males.
Florence King
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We worship education but hate learning.
Florence King
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Any discussion of the problems of being funny in America will not make sense unless we substitute the word wit for humor. Humor inspires sympathetic good-natured laughter and is favored by the healing-power gang. Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football instead of building character, it tears it down.
Florence King
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Now the only thing I miss about sex is the cigarette afterward. Next to the first one in the morning, it's the best one of all. It tasted so good that even if I had been frigid I would have pretended otherwise just to be able to smoke it.
Florence King
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To me, elitism means a love of excellence and superiority, but America has declared war on both and developed a sick love of the lowest common denominator to make sure no-one becomes too fine for our touted democracy. We are almost at the point of regarding every virtue as elitist.
Florence King
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If you ever meet someone who cannot understand why solitary confinement is considered punishment, you have met a misanthrope.
Florence King
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There's something unrefined about a reading woman, they always reek of the lamp. How can she grow up to be a lady if she's always got her nose in a book? Granny Rudin
Florence King
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There is nothing wrong with women's studies that studying the right women can't cure, but feminist literary scholars have a penchant for dragging the rivers of deserved obscurity for third-rate neurotics.
Florence King
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It takes only one child to raze a village.
Florence King
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For men who want to flee Family Man America and never come back, there is a guaranteed solution: homosexuality is the new French Foreign Legion.
Florence King
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Familiarity doesn't breed contempt, it is contempt.
Florence King
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Showing up at school already able to read is like showing up at the undertaker's already embalmed: people start worrying about being put out of their jobs.
Florence King
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I've always said that next to Imperial China, the South is the best place in the world to be an old lady.
Florence King
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Familiarity breeds democracry.
Florence King
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America is the only country in the world where you can suffer culture shock without leaving home.
Florence King
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Southerners have a genius for psychological alchemy...If something intolerable simply cannot be changed, driven away or shot they will not only tolerate it but take pride in it as well.
Florence King