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In other countries, congenital introverts simply remain introverts all their lives, neither advancing nor retreating, but America's commitment to extroversion as a national art form can abrade some naturally aloof personalities until they flower into deadly nightshade.

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
Art
Remain
Introverts
Form
Commitment
Aloof
America
National
Introvert
Country
Neither
Advancing
Flower
Personalities
Personality
Deadly
Extroversion
Simply
Naturally
Congenital
Lives
Countries
Retreating

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Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty - as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it.
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Learn to spot and avoid writer groupies. The writer's self-sufficiency and our love for our work tend to attract insecure people who never can get enough love. They grow jealous of our work and come to regard it as a rival. These people can destroy you, so kick them out of your life or don't admit them in the first place.
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Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football instead of building character, it tears it down.
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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.
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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.
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Let's bring back grandmothers! A real family consists of three generations. It's time Americans stopped worrying about interference and being a burden on the children and regrouped under one roof.
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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.
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My object is to live in a place that does not call itself 'the community with a heart.' I want one of those godforsaken towns where all the young people leave and the rest sit on the porch with a rifle across their knees.
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Chinks in America's egalitarian armor are not hard to find. Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.
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We worship education but hate learning.
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Randian heroes come off as metaphors for Jews because they are beset by irrational forces that try to bar them from the professions and use their virtues against them to bring about their destruction.
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If you ever meet someone who cannot understand why solitary confinement is considered punishment, you have met a misanthrope.
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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.
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A home without a grandmother is like an egg without salt.
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to a Southerner it is faux pas, not sins, that matter in this world.
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When women talk about privacy they mean abortion rights, and the millions of words feminists have written about a room of one'sown refer to psychological space, rarely to physical solitude. For most women being alone is tantamount to being deserted.
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Judge not, lest ye be judged judgmental.
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No matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoked on the street
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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.
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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.
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