A Quote by Willie Morris
My mother's people, the people who captured my imagination when I was growing up, were of the Deep South - emotional, changeable, touched with charisma and given to histrionic flourishes. They were courageous under tension and unexpectedly tough beneath their wild eccentricities, for they had and unusually close working agreement with God. They also had an unusually high quota of bullshit.
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Coming from the South and growing up in L.A. where it was so segregated - worse than the South in many ways - all the people in my neighborhood were from the South. So you had that Southern cultured environment. The church was very important. And there were these folk ways that were there. I was always fascinated by these Southern stories, people would share these mystified experiences of the South. I wanted to talk about folklore.
Growing up in the rural south, my family didn't look like our neighbors, and we didn't have much. There were times that were tough, but we had each other, and we had the opportunity to do anything, to be anything, as long as we were willing to work for it.
The people I know who seem to make unusual efforts at rationality, are unusually honest, or, failing that, at least have unusually bad social skills.
When I was growing up, our nation was partitioned: Blacks were segregated by law in the South and largely by custom in the North, though it, too, had segregation laws. Our best universities had quota systems. Many white communities had real estate covenants to keep nonwhites out.
Owing to the fact that leaders in the women's groups made a point of serving on the jury here whenever they were called, we have always had an unusually high type of women represented on the jury.
I used to be unusually short, and I think I'd prefer that to being unusually tall.
My wife is a doctor, and we had a decent life financially. My kids were going to nice schools and had nannies. We weren't rich, but we were better off than I was growing up. And I looked around, and I was like, 'Who are these people?' It was the opposite of what I remembered growing up.
When I was growing up, it was Clint Eastwood, it was Harrison Ford and Steve McQueen - these guys were tough. They were leading men, but they were also tough and physical.
One of the criticism I had about the Affordable Care Act is it made insurance so expensive that people who had it didn't even use it because their premiums were high. Their deductibles were high. Their copays were high.
The people who had the most impact on me when I was young were Freud and Darwin, but growing up I also had my film idols.
We were young, we were wild, we were restless
Had to go, had to fly, had to get away
Took a chance on that feelin'
We were lovin' blind borderline wreckless
We were livin' for the minute we were spinnin' in
Baby we were alot of things, but we weren't crazy
People were standing up everywhere shouting, "This is me! This is me!" Every time you looked at them they stood up and told you who they were, and the truth of it was that they had no more idea who or what they were than he had. They believed their flashing signs, too. They ought to be standing up and shouting, "This isn't me! This isn't me!" They would if they had any decency. "This isn't me!" Then you might know how to proceed through the flashing bullshit of this world.
In my family, growing up, the women were always the ones who were powerful, and they exuded this charisma of empowerment that I hold onto and always remember. I had some difficult times, but these strong women were always a constant.
I was brought up on the books of The Wizard of Oz and my mother told me that these were great philosophies. It was a very simple philosophy, that everybody had a heart, that everybody had a brain, that everybody had courage. These were the gifts that are given to you when you come on this earth, and if you use them properly, you reach the pot at the end of the rainbow. And that pot of gold was a home. And home isn't just a house or an abode, its people, people who love you and that you love. That's a home.
I think what shaped me was I had two parents who were scientists, and especially, they were great readers. They had both grown up in sort of rural parts of the South and were oddballs where they grew up. They were budding intellectuals.
I think I grew up with a profound sense of watching people who were good people, who were smart people, who were hardworking people - God, nobody on this Earth worked harder than my mom and dad - and they had very little.
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