One of life's intriguing paradoxes is that hierarchical social order makes cheap rents and outrรฉ artists' colonies possible. Raffish bohemian neighborhoods flourished in the days of racial segregation; under integration the artistic poor have no safe places in which to create.... If America lacks a vigorous culture it is partly because studios and ateliers have become crack houses.
Florence KingAs the only class distinction available in a democracy, the college degree has created a caste society as rigid as ancient India's. Condemning elitism and simultaneously quaking in fear that our children won't become members of the elite, we send them to college, not to learn, but to "be" college graduates, rationalizing our snobbery with the clichรฉ that high technology has eliminated the need for the manual labor that we secretly hold in contempt.
Florence KingThe copyeditor I drew was a brachycephalic, web-footed cretin who should have been in an institution learning how to make brooms.
Florence KingAmerican couples have gone to such lengths to avoid the interference of in-laws that they have to pay marriage counselors to interfere between them.
Florence KingRecently while browsing in a secondhand bookstore I bought a paperback copy of The Intellectual and the City, but I was unable to read it. When I got home I discovered that the original owner had highlighted the entire book - literally. Every line on every page had been drawn through with a bright green Magic Marker. It was a terrifying example of a mind that had lost all power of discrimination.
Florence King