You know: in a foolish, undiscriminating way, I've been happy these last few months. I don't know why. I just am. I love my friends; I love my pupils; I love what I read; I -- dammit -- love my thoughts. I love the taste of oranges.
Thornton Wilder in a letter to Gertrude Stein, Aug 14, 1936

Friday, June 10, 2011

HENRY JAMES ON PARIS HILTON

[She] had in a sublime degree a sense closed to the general question of difficulty, which she got rid of furthermore not in the least as one had seen many charming persons do, by merely passing it on to others. She kept it completely at a distance: it never entered the circle; the most plaintive confident couldn't have dragged it in; and to tread the path of a confident was to accordingly live exempt. Service was so easy to render that the whole thing was like court life without the hardships. It came back of course to the question of money...it prevailed even as the truth of truths that the girl couldn't get away from her wealth...She couldn't dress it away; she could neither smile it away in any dreamy absence nor blow it away in any softened sigh. She couldn't have lost it if she had tried -- that was what it was to be really rich. It had to be the thing you were.

Henry  James,  The Wings of the Dove

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