Angine Blanche Quotes

Like traditional upper class families, there are nannies and servants, and the children, you know, come in to say good-night before they go to bed. There's very little private time with the children in the early years. Actually, there's much more private time with the children in the 20s. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

The skin of the coward changes color all the time, he can't get a grip on himself, he can't sit still, he squats and rocks, shifting his weight from foot to foot, his heart racing, pounding inside the fellow's ribs, his teeth chattering. He dreads some grisly death. But the skin of a brave soldier never blanches. He's all control. Tense but no great fear. ~ Homer

Writing, like living, is lonely work. ~ Blanche Willis Howard

our democracy is controlled by a wealthy elite. Politicians who work for the wealthy need the police to protect them from the people. And so the whole chain of command protects the killer cop. The ruling class give carte blanche to law enforcement, who in turn press down on those most stranded by the neoliberal state, the poor-- and more so, the Black poor."
-- Nicolas Powers ~ Maya Schenwar

I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action. ~ Tennessee Williams

It occurs to Blanche that English doesn't have French's useful distinction between libre, meaning that something's unconstrained, and gratuit, meaning that it costs nothing. Free thought, free speech, free love: the English word that Arthur was so fond of obscures the price of things. ~ Emma Donoghue

We still have tremendous work ahead of us to ensure that women have equal opportunities in the workplace and in our society. ~ Blanche Lincoln

Oh, it's ridiculous. I ought to laugh. But I can't. You won't believe it."
"Of course we will," Sophye said.
"He offered you a carte blanche," Leonie said.
"No, he asked me to marry him."
There was a short stunned silence.
Then, "I reckon he's in a marrying mood," Sophy said. ~ Loretta Chase

And Grandmother Hall really imagines that she can raise Eleanor and her two brothers differently than these children were raised. And if she is very strict and everything is very regimented and ordered and disciplined, that they will become the perfect children who her own children did not become. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

Stella:
And when he comes back I cry on his lap like a baby..
[she smiles to herself]
Blanche:
I guess that is what is meant by being in love.. ~ Tennessee Williams

I think that, very often there's a pain that's just too painful to touch. You'll break apart. And I think her mother's death and disappearance and abandonment was something she just never could deal with. Eleanor Roosevelt, when she's really very unwell in 1936, she takes to her bed. She has a mysterious flu. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

By and large, the making of motion pictures is all about, 'Let's ratchet it up.' And I always think, 'We don't need to ratchet this up.' If you do, don't call it 'Captain Phillips' or 'The Maersk Alabama.' Call it something else, and then you have carte blanche to do anything, down to sea serpents and aliens. ~ Tom Hanks

Blanche, prosaic in a pale yellow sweater and blue jeans, was wondering again if anything mattered - -life, faith
specifically, finishing homework assignments. ~ Regina Doman

And even when success comes, as I am sure it will, bear in mind that there are more quiet and enviable joys than to be among the most sought after women at a ball ... ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

It's fascinating. It's also exhilarating when you see people making the exact same choices that you've made. It kind of validates what you've decided to do. I saw a wonderful production of Jessica Lange doing Streetcar with Alec Baldwin. It was gorgeous. It's a measure of what a great classic that is, that our Cate Blanchett also did an absolute amazing Blanche in Sydney, as well as in New York. ~ Jacki Weaver

Late in the evening, someone in the White House decided to vent to Ben Smith: 'A senior White House official just called me with a very pointed message for the administration's sometime allies in organized labor, who invested heavily in beating Blanche Lincoln, Obama's candidate, in Arkansas. "Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise," the official said. "If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November."'

Boy, good thing for this source there's no member of Obama's staff who's known for blowing his stack and venting furiously at political defeats. I'll bet he was pounding the desk like a battering Rahm and that he threw out the E-manual on how to talk to the press when he did it. ~ Jim Geraghty

In the studio you have pretty much carte blanche with whatever you're doing. You can turn natural instruments into electronic instruments. ~ John Cale

Nuit Blanche"

A music coaxed from humming strings would please;
Not plucked, but drawn in creeping cadences
Across a sunset wall where some Marquise
Picks a pale rose amid strange silences.


Ghostly and vaporous her gown sweeps by
The twilight dusking wall, I hear her feet
Delaying on the gravel, and a sigh,
Briefly permitted, touches the air like sleet


And it is dark, I hear her feet no more.
A red moon leers beyond the lily-tank.
A drunken moon ogling a sycamore,
Running long fingers down its shining flank.


A lurching moon, as nimble as a clown,
Cuddling the flowers and trees which burn like glass.
Red, kissing lips, I feel you on my gown -
Kiss me, red lips, and then pass - pass.


Music, you are pitiless to-night.
And I so old, so cold, so languorously white. ~ Amy Lowell

And he stood so closely behind her that she felt his breath feather her neck. Blanche leaped away, putting a polite distance between them, her heart suddenly thundering in her chest. His body hadn't touched hers, but it might as well have, for she had felt his heat. ~ Brenda Joyce

And when children begin to use their reason, fathers and mothers should take great pains to fill their hearts with the fear of God. This the good Queen Blanche did most earnestly by St. Louis, her son: witness her oft-repeated words, "My son, I would sooner see you die than guilty of a mortal sin;" words which sank so deeply into the saintly monarch's heart, that he himself said there was no day on which they did not recur to his mind, and strengthen him in treading God's ways. ~ Saint Francis De Sales

But it's also the beginning of another level of liberation for her]Eleanor Roosevelt], because when she returns to New York, she gets very involved in a new level of politics. She meets Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read, and becomes very involved in the women's movement, and then in the peace movement. And ironically, the years of her greatest despair become also the years of her great liberation. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

Same old notes, Blanche thinks at one point, but arranged into unfamiliar music. ~ Emma Donoghue

Eleanor Roosevelt's very helpful to a lot of children who cannot speak French, who do not write well. And Marie Souvestre is fierce. She tears up students' papers that are not, you know, perfect. And Eleanor Roosevelt goes around, again, being incredibly helpful to children in need, children in trouble. And her best friends are the naughtiest girls who are in trouble. And she is a leader. And she is encouraged to be a leader. And everybody falls in love with her. She's a star. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

And you can really see in all of these issues that are priorities for Eleanor Roosevelt, where the compromises are painful, the compromises are hard, and the difficulties between them really begin to loom very large by 1936, by 1938. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

Don't allow yourself to get into the habit of dressing carelessly when there is 'only' your husband to see you. Depend upon it he has no use for faded tea-gowns and badly dressed hair, and he abhors the sight of curling pins as much as other men do. He is a man after all, and if his wife does not take the trouble to charm him, there are plenty of other women who will. ~ Blanche Ebbutt

Unless you're honest, you won't know that the love is true. It's easy to say I love you, much harder to say I'd never lie to you. ~ Blanche Marriott

Voters must have faith in the electoral process for our democracy to succeed. ~ Blanche Lincoln

Don't forget to be your wife's best friend as well as her husband. True friendship in marriage does away with all sorts of trouble. ~ Blanche Ebbutt

And in the same way, FDR's not much of a father. Although the children in all their memoirs really talk about what a fun-loving guy Dad was, and how brooding and unhappy Mom was. The children sort of blame it all on the mother. Well, this is kind of standard and typical, and aggrieved Eleanor Roosevelt that she was not a happier mother. She wanted to be a happier mother. And I must say, she was a happier grandmother. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

Whether it's your personal life or career, people feel they have carte blanche to everything that goes on in your life. I don't agree with that, but I do feel I have to share my thoughts on those things with people instead of totally avoiding it. I want to put it out there the way I want to put it out there. ~ Faith Evans

I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases. ~ Edmund Burke

Unless we make education a priority, an entire generation of Americans could miss out on the American dream. ~ Blanche Lincoln

Don't set your husband up on a pedestal and then cry when you find that he is only an ordinary man, after all. ~ Blanche Ebbutt

Stanley:
Delicate piece she is.
Stella:
She is. She was. You didn't know Blanche as a girl. Nobody, nobody, was tender and trusting as she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change. ~ Tennessee Williams

Humans will be like decayed gentry. We'll have the glorious mansion called the past that is falling into disrepair. We'll have a piece of land that we didn't look after very well called the planet. And we'll have some nice clothes and a lot of stories. We'll be fading aristocracy. We'll be Blanche Dubois in a moth-eaten silk dress. We'll be Marie Antionette with no cake. ~ Jeanette Winterson

You cannot give the vice president the authority to declassify specific information and then turn around and say he can just give carte blanche to an assistant of his to declassify whatever he wants. ~ Joe Biden

Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs Dent and Mrs Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Jenny wouldn't be dead if she'd never crashed into Blanche on Kearny Street. P'tit wouldn't exist if Blanche had never met Arthur. Facts as hard as rocks, and Blanche has to pick her way among them, find her balance, with an acrobat's cocky smile. ~ Emma Donoghue

She writes that one of the moments that she felt most useful was when her mother had a headache, and she would stroke her head and rub her forehead. And I think Eleanor Roosevelt's entire life was dedicated to two things: (one) making it better for all people, people in trouble and in need, like her family. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

Now, I do come from a part of the country where the people say that the only thing in the middle of the road is a yellow line or roadkill. ~ Blanche Lincoln

I think Eleanor Roosevelt always had a most incredible comfort writing letters. I mean, she was in the habit of writing letters. And that's where she allowed her fantasies to flourish. That's where she allowed her emotions to really evolve. And that's where she allowed herself to express herself really fully, and sometimes whimsically, very often romantically. And it really starts with her letters to her father, who is lifelong her primary love. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

In Arkansas alone, approximately three quarters of a million people are at risk of going hungry, and one in four children does not get enough to eat, so my goal is to bring awareness to this tragic issue. ~ Blanche Lincoln

Blanche talks about aging, and why should she be considered poor, because physical beauty is transitory and fading and she has such richness of the soul. I think that speech is so beautiful, and so telling and so true. ~ Delta Burke

I mean, if you pause over what it means at the age of 76 that Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, the happiest single day of her life was the day she made the first team at field hockey. Field hockey is a team sport. Field hockey is a knockabout - I mean, picture Allenswood, the swamps of north London. It's a messy sport. So she really enjoyed playing this rough-and-tumble sport in the mud of Allenswood, a team sport. And she was very competitive. And she loved being competitive, and she loved to win. And that, I think, was all of the things that Allenswood enabled. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook