🌹 Share your most poetic line.
I'll go with an actual in-universe piece of poetry written by one of the characters:
We were the gaunt-oared representations at dawn.
This young one did not alone go under.
👤 Share a line that shows a character’s personality.
‘You’ve become very illustrious very young,’ I say.
‘Illustriousness is in the eye of the beholder. What I’ve indisputably become I guess is very famous, but the same could be said of a lot of people. Barbra Streisand is one of the most famous actresses and singers in the world right now and she’s two years younger than I am. I don’t think being famous at my age is particularly remarkable.’
‘Being famous in world politics, though; an old boys’ club in all senses of the term.’
‘Yes, that I suppose is remarkable, although you’d be surprised how much acting goes into statecraft and diplomacy. Sometimes even singing! But no, to answer your earlier question, I’m finding I can get by without a man better than I thought I’d be able to, and so I’m not devoting a ton of energies to finding one.’
I tell her that I think our readers, many of whom are younger and more feminist-minded ladies, will be gratified to hear that, especially from a Catholic centrist politician.
‘I enjoy being a centrist,’ she says. ‘Policies like the wealth tax would have probably ended up being way more intrusive, N.R.A.-like if you’re familiar with the F.D.R. era, if it hadn’t been partly my job to whip votes for them.’
I ask her what she thinks of people trying to pit her against her sister on the basis of brains, or looks, or attributes like those.
‘I was recently playing a chess game against my chief of station, Rod Courtney,’ she tells me. ‘He was trying to manipulate one of my rooks into a position where he could capture it so he could safely promote a pawn, and I didn’t see a way to avoid that so I offered him a draw. He told me afterwards that, even if he’d taken out my rook, I had actually been in a good position to put my king somewhere where it could capture the pawn as soon as it promoted; he would have resigned once I had done that. You can have as sharp a mind as you like, and obviously you can be as pretty or as ‘sexy’ as you like, and it doesn’t make much difference to your prospects unless you have what my father used to call the practical know-how to read the situation you’re in. I think my sister and I are more or less equal in terms of having that practical know-how; in fact, now that you mention it, I think I resent the implication that I should take that kind of rivalry seriously. I don’t think my sister’s successes have in any way detracted from my own. We spent years not getting along nearly as well as we do now, but it wasn’t for that reason at all.’
