“Although I dreamed of flying from childhood, that was utterly unthinkable. I had to start work early, a shoeshine boy — a poor man's profession — or selling vegetables.”

— Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez

Source: Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez (2021) cited in " Cuba’s Only Cosmonaut: Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez https://aldianews.com/articles/leaders/cubas-only-cosmonaut-arnaldo-tamayo-mendez/68439" on Al Día News, 7 December 2021.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Dec. 27, 2021. History

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Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez1

Cuban cosmonaut 1942

Paul Marciano (1952) American fashion designer

Interview on the TMN magazine http://topmeganews.com/exclusive-interview-with-the-co-founder-of-guess-paul-marciano/

“After one of those terrible lovers' quarrels that leave one in a state of incomprehensible despair. I came out of the theater, tears streaming, and overheard the petulant voice of a college girl complaining to her boyfriend, "Well I don't see what was so special about that movie." I walked up the street, crying blindly, no longer certain whether my tears were for the tragedy on the screen, the hopelessness I felt for myself, or the alienation I felt from those who could not experience the radiance of Shoeshine. For if people cannot feel Shoeshine, what can they feel?… Later I learned that the man with whom I had quarreled had gone the same night and had also emerged in tears. Yet our tears for each other, and for Shoeshine did not bring us together. Life, as Shoeshine demonstrates, is too complex for facile endings.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

Review for Shoeshine (1946) as quoted in Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me (2004) by Craig Seligman.

“Then let not what I cannot have
My cheer of mind destroy.
Whilst thus I sing, I am a king,
Although a poor blind boy!”

Colley Cibber (1671–1757) British poet laureate

Source: The Blind Boy (l. 17-20).

“From you, my boy, I expect no less than the completely preposterous and utterly calamitous.”

David Brin book Earth

Part V (p. 250)
Earth (1990)

“We were poor. If I wasn't a boy, I wouldn't have had nothing to play with.”

Redd Foxx (1922–1991) American comedian and actor

As quoted in More Sex Talk : A New Collection of Ribald, Raunchy, and Provocative Quotations (2002) by James Wolfe, p. 114; similar lines were also used in the comedic routines of Rodney Dangerfield.

“I enjoyed it from a very early age. When I had to make my own living after college, I decided to give doing what I enjoyed most a shot as a profession. It worked out and I’ve never had to “work” for a living since. If I hadn’t gotten so lucky, there were plenty of options open to me being, after all, a young educated white male in America.”

Clancy Brown (1959) American actor and voice actor

Interview with Clancy Brown http://mediamikes.com/2011/03/interview-with-clancy-brown/ (March 14, 2011)

“From my childhood, obedience was something I could not get out of my system. When I entered the armed services at the age of 27, I found being obedient not a bit more difficult than it had been during my life to that point. It was unthinkable that I would not follow orders.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Die Welt memoirs (1999)

“I started working with my dreams, because I'm not so censored when I use dream material.”

Kathy Acker (1947–1997) American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet

Kathy Acker: Where does she get off?
Context: I'm starting to worry about self-censorship — that I might be internalizing some shit. I might be writing what people expect me to write, writing from that place where I might be ruled by economic considerations. To overcome that, I started working with my dreams, because I'm not so censored when I use dream material. And I'm working at trying to find a kind of language where I won't be so easily modulated by expectation. I'm looking for what might be called a body language. One thing I do is stick a vibrator up my cunt and start writing — writing from the point of orgasm and losing control of the language and seeing what that's like.

“I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days.”

Andrew Wiles (1953) British mathematician

Nova Interview

“I have no pity for myself either. So let it be veronal. But I wish Hercule Poirot had never retired from work and come here to grow vegetable marrows.”

Agatha Christie book The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Doctor Sheppard
Source: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)

“Although I dreamed of flying from childhood, that was utterly unthinkable. I had to start work early, a shoeshine boy — a poor man's profession — or selling vegetables.”

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