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The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

Shana Alexander

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Shana Alexander
Age: 79 †
Born: 1925
Born: October 6
Died: 2005
Died: June 23
Author
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
Shana Ager
Relationship
Makes
Truth
Love
Life
Witty
People
Excellence
Nervous
Perfection

More quotes by Shana Alexander

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Between the two poles of whole-truth and half-truth is slung the chancy hammock in which we all rock.
Shana Alexander
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We are on a sexual binge in this country. ... One consequence of this binge is that while people now get into bed more readily and a lot more naturally than they once did, what happens there often seems less important.
Shana Alexander
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The paradox of Reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind's eye.
Shana Alexander
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This is what holidays, travels, vacations are about. It is not really rest or even leisure we chase. We strain to renew our capacity for wonder to shock ourselves into astonishment once again.
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When two people marry they become in the eyes of the law one person, and that one person is the husband.
Shana Alexander
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The difficulty with becoming a patient is that as soon as you get horizontal, part of your being yearns, not for a doctor, but for a medicine man.
Shana Alexander
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Faithful horoscope-watching, practiced daily, provides just the sort of small but warm and infinitely reassuring fillip that gets matters off to a spirited start.
Shana Alexander
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Letters are expectation packaged in an envelope.
Shana Alexander
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What troubles me is not that movie stars run for office, but that they find it easy to get elected. It should be difficult. It should be difficult for millionaires, too.
Shana Alexander
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Good drama should sandpaper the mind.
Shana Alexander
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As a general rule, fans and idols should always be kept at arm's length, the length of the arm to be proportionate to the degree of sheer idolatry involved. Don't take a Beatle to lunch. Don't wait up to see if the Easter Bunny is real. Just enjoy the egg hunt.
Shana Alexander
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trying to squash a rumor is like trying to unring a bell.
Shana Alexander
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The real trouble with the doctor image in America is that it has been grayed by the image of the doctor-as-businessman, the doctor-as-bureaucrat, the doctor-as-medical-robot, and the doctor-as-terrified-victim-of-malpractice-suits.
Shana Alexander
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Until quite recently dance in America was the ragged Cinderella of the arts . . .
Shana Alexander
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The mark of a true crush... is that you fall in love first and grope for reasons afterward.
Shana Alexander
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The notion that the great artist requires a great patron has been around since the Pharaohs. That the born patron also needs an artist to patronize is a less-studied phenomenon.
Shana Alexander
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Ours was the Togetherness Generation. We equated togetherness with salvation, and expected so much from it that it was bound to let us down. Companionship, security, lifelong physical and spiritual and emotional warmth - all were to be had for the twist of a ring and the breathing of a vow. And to be had no other way.
Shana Alexander
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the metabolism of a consumer society requires it continually to eat and excrete, every day throwing itself away in plastic bags.
Shana Alexander
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I reserve my greatest admiration for those who continue to struggle to embrace the whole impossible tangle of snakes that is our society those who fight to identify and strengthen human connections, and defeat polarizing forces that strain to drive us apart.
Shana Alexander
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Americans ought to be the best-traveled, most cosmopolitan people on earth, not only because experience of the world is desirable in its own right, but because as a people acquires a great concentration of power, worldliness becomes a moral imperative.
Shana Alexander