A Quote by Ben Fountain

We, America, elected Trump. Putin didn't do it, nor the trolls in St. Petersburg with their zillions of busy bots. They may well have plucked certain strings in the national psyche - played us like a dimestore ukulele - but we were keen to be plucked.
We were both [ with Russel Crowe] hand-plucked to do [The Quick and the Death]. He had done Romper Stomper and I had done Gilbert Grape and so we were hand- plucked to do this big budget film. So we were both very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Weep no more, nor sigh, nor groan, Sorrow calls no time that 's gone; Violets plucked, the sweetest rain Makes not fresh nor grow again.
So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature: This is old age; but then thou must outlive Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change To withered weak and grey.
In Donald Trump, you have somebody who praises Vladimir Putin all the time. America should really wonder about a President Trump, who had a campaign manager with ties to Putin, pro- Putin elements in the Ukraine, who had to be fired for that reason. They should wonder - when Donald Trump is sitting down with Vladimir Putin, is it going to be America's bottom line or is it going to be Donald Trump's bottom line that he's going to be worried about with all of his business dealings?
Well, harpsichord is kind of a big guitar, isn't it? I mean, it is plucked, after all.
A life where bots tell us what to do every second - get up, go to work, do this, have kids with this person - is completely reasonable. Bots determine our economic opportunities; We have already accepted that. All the decision making would be done by bots and we wouldn't even notice.
I remember my very first encounter with Japan. At that time, I was Deputy Mayor of St Petersburg. Out of nowhere, Japan's Consul General in St Petersburg came to my office and said Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs wanted to invite me to Japan. I was very surprised because I had nothing to do with Japan except being a judoka. This was an opportunity to visit Tokyo and a couple of other cities. And, you know, a capital is a capital everywhere: there is the official script and certain protocol. It is always easier to talk in the provinces, the conversation is more natural.
Consider what you have in the smallest well-chosen library-a company of the wisest and wittiest men which can be plucked out of all civilized countries in a thousand years. The men themselves were then hidden and inaccessible. They were solitary, impatient of interruption, and fenced by etiquette. But now they are immortal, and the thought they did not reveal, even to their bosom friends, is here written out in transparent words of light to us, who are strangers of another age.
America should really wonder about a President Trump, who had a campaign manager with ties to Putin, pro-putin elements in the Ukraine who had to be fired for that reason. They should wonder when Donald Trump is sitting down with Vladimir Putin, is it going to be America's bottom line, or is it going to be Donald Trump's bottom line he's going to be worried about with all of his business dealings. This would be solved if Donald Trump would release his tax returns as he's told the American public that he would do.
Vladimir Putin was awarded an advanced degree by the St. Petersburg Mining Institute with the help of a dissertation that, as two Brookings researchers discovered, included sixteen stolen pages - and, remarkably, not a single set of quotation marks.
I went to St. Petersburg - St. Petersburg is awesome.
And by the Sacred Parchment, I swear that if I reveal the secrets of The Stonecutters, may my stomach become bloated and my head be plucked of all but three hairs
A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.
In America, politicians do whatever to get re-elected, and a lot of decisions that were being made at that time by Kennedy were certain not to get him re-elected.
Reason and happiness are like other flowers; they wither when plucked.
I've been very well received by all the people I've met in St. Petersburg.
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