However vivid they might be, past images and future delights did not protect Sylvia from the present, which "rules despotic over pale shadows of past and future". That was Sylvia's genius and her Panic Bird- her total lack of nostalgia. She had no armor. This left her especially vulnerable in New York, where she was removed from the context of her life, severed from that reassuring arc. Elizabeth Winder
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you. - Jonathan Safran Foer

  2. There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it. - Shannon L. Alder

  3. Sometimes loneliness makes the loudest noise. - Aaron BenZeev

  4. How sad and bad and mad it was - but then, how it was sweet - Robert Browning

  5. Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space. - Orhan Pamuk

More Quotes By Elizabeth Winder
  1. For years I wondered what was her curious power, her ability to attract all kinds of people to her and to use them for her own ends, often with their knowledge. i think it was that people liked watching and being with someone who enjoyed...

  2. Sylvia possessed a deeply conditioned respect for authority. She wanted desperately to live up to the expectations of a society that viewed her as a bright, charming, enormously talented disciple of bourgeois conformity. On the other hand, she ached to experience life in all its...

  3. Sylvia quotes Dick as telling her: "I am afraid the demands of wifehood and motherhood would preoccupy you too much to allow you to do the painting and writing you want." Dick was sharp enough to understand that the bright flame that drew him to...

  4. When I was doing the Mademoiselle application my husband would peer over my shoulder and say, "What are you doing competing with the best brains in the country? Why don't you just wash the dishes?" When the telegram came from Mademoiselle, I ran outside and...

  5. The very act of accepting her position at Mademoiselle was an act of open defiance against Dick Norton, his entire family, and the gendered expectations of midcentury America.

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