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The copyeditor I drew was a brachycephalic, web-footed cretin who should have been in an institution learning how to make brooms.

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
Footed
Brooms
Drew
Institution
Institutions
Learning
Make

More quotes by Florence King

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Never look on the bright side. The glare is blinding.
Florence King
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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.
Florence King
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Gradually my whole concept of time changed until I thought of a month as having twenty-five days of humanness and five others when I might just as well have been an animal in a steel trap.
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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Real feminism is spinsterhood. It's time America admitted that old maids give all women a good name.
Florence King
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Very is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen. For example, would you rather hear the mincing shallowness of I love you very much or the heart-slamming intensity of I love you?
Florence King
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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.
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 doesn't breed contempt, it is contempt.
Florence King
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Why do I hate people? Who else is there to hate?
Florence King
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The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners.
Florence King
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because the theater lost a Barrymore every time a Southerner decided not to go on the stage, just about anything that comes out of a Southern mouth is bound to be a ringing line.
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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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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America is the only country in the world where you can suffer culture shock without leaving home.
Florence King
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We worship education but hate learning.
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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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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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