“Mrs. Robbins asked: “If I am not for myself, who then is for me?”—and she was for herself so passionately that the other people in the world decided that they were not going to let Pamela Robbins beat them at her own game, and stopped playing.”

— Randall Jarrell, book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1, p. 12

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Randall Jarrell215

poet, critic, novelist, essayist 1914–1965

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Both Mattson and Robbins looked at Szilard warily. “There are no negotiations with the Obin,” Robbins said.
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“…and then President Robbins began to speak.
After two sentences one realized once more that President Robbins was an extraordinary speaker, a speaker of a—one says an almost extinct school, but how does one say the opposite? a not-yet-evolved school? He did something so logical that it is impossibe that no one else should have thought of it, yet no one has. President Robbins crooned his speeches.
His voice not only took you into his confidence, it laid a fire for you and put your slippers by it and then went into the other room to get into something more comfortable. It was a Compromising voice.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1, p. 25

“Mrs. Robbins asked: “If I am not for myself, who then is for me?”—and she was for herself so passionately that the other people in the world decided that they were not going to let Pamela Robbins beat them at her own game, and stopped playing.”

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Randall Jarrell215

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