Source: Farewell Waltz
"Ben Watson interviews Frank Zappa", in MOJO magazine (October 1993).
“I am ready to obey as a child; — but, not being a child, I think I ought to have a reason.”
Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 9
“I'm convinced that before the year 2000 is over, the first child will have been born on the moon.”
Taped TV interview, broadcast on WMAL, Washington, (7 January 1972), as reported in "Birth of Child on Moon Foreseen by von Braun", New York Times (7 January 1972), p. 14
My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)
Context: And thereupon the Lord gave Satan the power to destroy the property and children of Job. In a little while these high contracting parties met again; and the Lord seemed somewhat elated with his success, and called again the attention of Satan to the sinlessness of Job. Satan then told him to touch his body and he would curse him. And thereupon power was given to Satan over the body of Job, and he covered his body with boils. Yet in all this, Job did not sin with his lips. This book seems to have been written to show the excellence of patience, and to prove that at last God will reward all who will bear the afflictions of heaven with fortitude and without complaint. The sons and daughters of Job had been slain, and then the Lord, in order to reward Job, gave him other children, other sons and other daughters—not the same ones he had lost; but others. And this, according to the writer, made ample amends. Is that the idea we now have of love? If I have a child, no matter how deformed that child may be, and if it dies, nobody can make the loss to me good by bringing a more beautiful child. I want the one I loved and the one I lost.
“You have lost a child, a dear, dear child. I have lost the only earthly object of my affection”
Letter returned to him unopened, to the father of his former fiancée Ann Coleman, written after her death, rumored to have been suicide soon after her breaking of their engagement. (1819).
Context: You have lost a child, a dear, dear child. I have lost the only earthly object of my affection.... I have now one request to make,... deny me not. Afford me the melancholy pleasure of seeing her body before internment.
Hercule Poirot
Curtain - Poirot's Last Case (1975)
“I wish the autistic child I have did not exist, and I had a different [nonautistic] child instead.”
Source: Far from the Tree, Ch. 1 Son, p 37.
Context: When parents say, "I wish my child did not have autism," what they're really saying is "I wish the autistic child I have did not exist, and I had a different [nonautistic] child instead." Read that again. This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure. This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces. —Jim Sinclair
Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (1861)
Context: The education of the child must accord both in mode and arrangement with the education of mankind, considered historically. In other words, the genesis of knowledge in the individual, must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge in the race. In strictness, this principle may be considered as already expressed by implication; since both being processes of evolution, must conform to those same general laws of evolution... and must therefore agree with each other. Nevertheless this particular parallelism is of value for the specific guidance it affords. To M. Comte we believe society owes the enunciation of it; and we may accept this item of his philosophy without at all committing ourselves to the rest.<!--p.75
"Uma Thurman on Harvey Weinstein and sexual misconduct in Hollywood: 'When I’m ready, I’ll say what I have to say" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2017/11/05/uma-thurman-harvey-weinstein-sexual-misconduct-hollywoodwhen/, Telegraph Reporters, Telegraph, 5 November 2017.
