#michael arlen

[j-august]

And Iris smiled, and those very white teeth bit the moment into two pieces with their smile and dropped the pieces into limbo.

Michael Arlen, The Green Hat

[newyorkthegoldenage]

From the first issue of The New Yorker, Feb. 21, 1925. Thumbnail reviews of some plays running on Broadway.

[j-august]

One must say this for the warriors of caste and conduct: they seldom try to improve any man.

Michael Arlen, The Green Hat

[j-august]

"Avoid dreams," he said. "Never stop to listen to the clouds passing overhead. You will be run over. Never sympathise with the moon when you can hear it, cold and lonely and blind, crooning to itself like a corpse singing a hymn. You will catch pneumonia."

Michael Arlen, The Green Hat

[j-august]

One likes so few people, but one likes those few very, very much.

Michael Arlen, The Green Hat

[j-august]

"It's absurd," I said, "to talk in 'generations'. Slack novelists do it to get easy effects. All generations are a mess."

Michael Arlen, The Green Hat

[j-august]

"They call it," she said, "the desire-for-I-know-not-what. They will find it one day when we are dead and all things that live now are dead. They will find it when everything is dead but the dreams we have no words for. It is not chocolate, it is not cigarettes, it is not cocaine, nor opium, nor sex. It is not eating, drinking, flying, fighting, loving. It is not love's delight, it is not bearing childing, though in that there are moments like jewels. There is one taste in us that is unsatisfied. I don't know what that taste is, but I know it is there. Life's best gift, hasn't someone said, is the ability to dream of a better life…"

Michael Arlen, The Green Hat

[j-august]

"Writers," I said, and, I think, said rightly, "love money, they adore money! Successful writers, I mean. The ones who have become venerable - the ones who have made great names by writing about the irony of life and the incapabilities of wealth, the writers of the people for the people. They worship money, they hoard money. One and all despise rich people, and are perfectly beastly about the upper-classes. You should ask any publisher about the business capacity of any great author who writes about the Irony of Life."

Michael Arlen, The Green Hat