“President Robbins was so well adjusted to his environment that sometimes you could not tell which was the environment and which was President Robbins.”

—  Randall Jarrell , book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Ch. 1, p. 11

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Randall Jarrell 215
poet, critic, novelist, essayist 1914–1965

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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.”

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