Quotes by Edward Moore

“As far back as I can remember, Beatrice and Glory been usin’ Jesus as an excuse to be bitches.””

“That’s the ugliest dress in the whole world.” Odette replied, “My grandmama made it for me. She’s real good at sewin’, but she’s blind.” She popped another piece of candy into her mouth and added, “This ain’t the ugliest dress in the world. I’m gonna wear that one tomorrow.””

“Later, Barbara Jean would remember looking at those eyes and thinking, This must be what the sky looks like if you see it through a diamond.””

“Mama sneered at them. “I know you and Clarice are friends, but you can’t tell me you don’t wanna slap the livin’ shit outta that mother of hers. Talk about somebody with her head stuffed way up her own ass. And that sister of hers is just as bad. As far back as I can remember, Beatrice and Gory been usin’ Jesus as an excuse to be bitches.” She wagged her finger at them and, like they could hear her, said, “That’s right, I said it!””

“She stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her way…she adjusted her sails.”2”

“These were the Sophists, and their interest was in teaching the use of argumentative skills of the sort previous philosophers had exhibited, but as a means of attaining worldly success, for instance in politics. Unfortunately, they gained a reputation for being rather cynical and unscrupulous in their argumentative standards: any old argument would do as long as it persuaded one’s listener, even if it was totally fallacious; what mattered was winning the debate, not arriving at the truth, and the line between logic and rhetoric was thus blurred. (The Sophists are still with us. Today we call them “lawyers,” “professors of literary criticism,” and “Michael Moore.”)””

“I can prove now, for instance, that two human hands exist. How?. By holding up my two hands, and saying, as I make a certain gesture with the right hand 'Here is one hand' and adding, as I make a certain gesture with the left 'and here is another.' And if, by doing this, I have proved ipso facto the existence of external things. And if, by doing this, I have proved ipso facto the existence of external things, you will all see that I can also do it now in numbers of other ways: there isno need to multiply examples. But did I prove just now that two human hands were then in existence? I do want to insist that I did; that the proof which I gave was a perfectly rigorous one; and that it is perhaps impossible to give a better or more rigorous proof of anything whatever.””

“Tis now the summer of your youth: time has not cropped the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them.””

“What we call miracles is just what's supposed to happen. We either go with it or stand in its way.””

“I looked around for that welcoming light I'd heard about, but I didn't see it. Instead, everything around me seemed to glow and shimmer in the sunlight. I heard beautiful sounds-not the voices of dead loved ones, but the laughter and singing of my children when they were tiny. I saw James, young and shirtless, chasing them through Mama's garden. Off in the distance I saw Barbara Jean and Clarice, and even myself when we were kids, dancing to music pouring out of my old pink and violet portable record player. Here I was with my fingers brushing up against the frame of the picture I'd been painting for the last fifty-five years, and my beautiful, scarred husband, my happy children, and my laughing friends were right there with me.””

“The entire university will know by morning that I just claimed Hallie Jo Edwards.””

“In America, they are the ‘squeezed middle’. A better term is the ‘precariat’ – those whose lives are dominated by economic insecurity. Their weight of numbers is growing. So, too, is their impatience. Barrington Moore, the American sociologist, famously said, ‘No bourgeoisie, no democracy.’ In the coming years we will find out if he was right.””