Miskinis Obituary Quotes & Sayings

Published in this month's Harper's, from a conversation held in Beijing in February 1973:
Chairman Mao Zedong: Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you ten million.
U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger: The chairman is improving his offer.
Mao: We can let them flood your country with disaster and therefore impair your interests. In our country we have too many women, and they have a way of doing things. They give birth to children, and our children are too many. — Mao Tse-tung

Friendships were tricky things, especially friendships as old as theirs was. Nudity was nothing more than a collection of hard-earned scars and marks. Love was a given, uncomplicated by sex or vows, but honesty was always waiting there, ready to capsize the steady boat. — Emma Straub

I feel like Harriet Tubman, except I am trying to free people through underground music, to free themselves creatively and inspirationally. — Janelle Monae

You never know how a horse will pull until you hook him to a heavy load. — Paul Bryant

Stupid heart, Stupid Girl! — Shannon Delany

the Great Vaccination - the vaccination against the stupidity of the intelligentsia. — Alvaro De Campos

The common people do not accurately adapt their thoughts to objects; nor, secondly, do they accurately adapt their words to their thoughts; they do not mean to lie; but, taking no pains to be exact, they give you very false accounts. A great part of their language is proverbial; if anything rocks at all, they say it rocks like a cradle; and in this way they go on. — Samuel Johnson

We started focusing on this in earnest late summer and early fall. I can build more power plants. In the 12 years before us, not a single plant of major consequence was built. — Gray Davis