Word: instinctiveness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Susan Minot's first novel is a way to understand the familial instinct at a ^ time when young women have other demands made on their minds and bodies. The point of view is largely that of Sophie, the second daughter, who coolly focuses on incidents that span some dozen years. The book is in nine episodes that could be, with minor adjustments, independent stories. "Hiding," the opening section, locates the emotional poles of the Vincent family. With a mischievous "hee hee hee," Rosie crams herself and her children into a huge linen closet. The point is to play a trick...
...said at a proctor group's meeting, "If you see someone trip and send their lunch flying all over the Union and get embarrassed, you should give them sarcastic applause so you can make them feel even more stupid." It was as if the whole thing happened by instinct, as if people who end up at Harvard have a second sense about trashing each other...
...ultimately be redeemed by the kind of people it has always attracted. The dilemma, in part, is how to preserve the old atmosphere of entrepreneurial daring and adventure, while spending the money needed to educate the young for a new world in a new century. The Texan's instinct prefers action to thought, which may explain why the state ranks 46th in the nation in Scholastic Aptitude Test scores...
...middle-class instinct (subliminal, unshakable) to "make something of yourself" and contribute to society, has led us down the Establishment road --what we used to call selling out. We like to think that our careers give us more effective ways to act on our values than we had as students. We all try to do good and do well at the same time...
...radiation leak soon enough, had he thought through the consequences of trying to keep the catastrophe a secret and had he openly invited foreign scientists and technicians to help put out the fire, Gorbachev might have scored a brilliant diplomatic success. But by acquiescing to the Soviet instinct for glum silence, he showed anew that he remains very much a creature of the stolid system that brought him to power...