“A Broadway play is so much an event, designed down to the bit parts to explode in your face on one particular night, that it is hard to judge any one of them fairly from the scrawny instructions known as a script.”

— Wilfrid Sheed

Clare Boothe Luce http://books.google.com/books?id=mVYfAQAAMAAJ&q=%22A+Broadway+play+is+so+much+an+event+designed+down+to+the+bit+parts+to+explode+in+your+face+on+one+particular+night+that+it+is+hard+to+judge+any+one+of+them+fairly+from+the+scrawny+instructions+known+as+a+script%22&pg=PA69#v=onepage (1982)

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Wilfrid Sheed 50

English-American novelist and essayist 1930–2011

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Context: To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The natural laziness of the mind tempts one to eschew authors who demand a continuous effort of intelligence. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.
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“Without the hard little bits of marble which are called 'facts' or 'data' one cannot compose a mosaic; what matters, however, are not so much the individual bits, but the successive patterns into which you arrange them, then break them up and rearrange them.”

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“The disappearance of nations would impoverish us no less than if all peoples were made alike, with one character, one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, they are its generalized personalities: the smallest of them has its own particular colors, and embodies a particular facet of God's design.”

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“A second hard truth: Much research points to the widespread existence of unconscious bias. Many people in our white-majority culture have unconscious racial biases and react differently to a white face than a black face. In fact, we all, white and black, carry various biases around with us. I am reminded of the song from the Broadway hit, Avenue Q: “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.” Part of it goes like this: Look around and you will find. No one’s really color blind. Maybe it’s a fact. We all should face. Everyone makes judgments. Based on race. You should be grateful I did not try to sing that.”

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“A Broadway play is so much an event, designed down to the bit parts to explode in your face on one particular night, that it is hard to judge any one of them fairly from the scrawny instructions known as a script.”

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Wilfrid Sheed 50

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