The collection / 28 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01Undated

For years I wondered what was her curious power, her ability to attract all kinds of people to her and to use them for her own ends, often with their knowledge. i think it was that people liked watching and being with someone who enjoyed life as much as Sylvia seemed to enjoy it. She squeezed all the juice from the orange, or, to change the figure, drained the cup to the leaves, the very dregs.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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02Undated

Sylvia possessed a deeply conditioned respect for authority. She wanted desperately to live up to the expectations of a society that viewed her as a bright, charming, enormously talented disciple of bourgeois conformity. On the other hand, she ached to experience life in all its grim and beautiful complexity. The poetic eye was always at work examining the nuance and measuring obscure detail, turning conversation into ultimatum (Steiner)

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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03Undated

Sylvia quotes Dick as telling her: "I am afraid the demands of wifehood and motherhood would preoccupy you too much to allow you to do the painting and writing you want." Dick was sharp enough to understand that the bright flame that drew him to Sylvia disqualified her from his future. He would not allow Sylvia- or any woman- to outshine him.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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04Undated

When I was doing the Mademoiselle application my husband would peer over my shoulder and say, "What are you doing competing with the best brains in the country? Why don't you just wash the dishes?" When the telegram came from Mademoiselle, I ran outside and shouted, "Guess who has the best brains in the country?

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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05Undated

The very act of accepting her position at Mademoiselle was an act of open defiance against Dick Norton, his entire family, and the gendered expectations of midcentury America.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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06Undated

Sylvia would have taken it seriously- so strong was her devotion to the innate intelligence of form. Those pretty tools like glue and pens, pasting together look-books – for Sylvia it would have been like toy making or arranging jewels. Unfortunately, Sylvia’s flair for design and graphics went unnoticed by the Mademoiselle staff, who had already pigeonholed her as a “writer”.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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07Undated

However vivid they might be, past images and future delights did not protect Sylvia from the present, which "rules despotic over pale shadows of past and future". That was Sylvia's genius and her Panic Bird- her total lack of nostalgia. She had no armor. This left her especially vulnerable in New York, where she was removed from the context of her life, severed from that reassuring arc.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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08Undated

Sylvia had begun her month in New York with princessy pomp and fanfare….Her departure on June 27 was entirely different. She left New York shaken, depleted, and utterly alone.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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09Undated

...she could not stick by the golden mean...was always anxious to experiment in extremes...to find out what was enough by indulging herself in too much." (Gordon Lameyer)

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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10Undated

That none discussed their doubts, that they assumed everyone else was just having a grand time of it and felt at ease and enjoying the ride, was perhaps the most toxic element to this particular kind of noisy loneliness.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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11Undated

This is the story of an electrically alive young woman on the brink of her adult life. An artist equally attuned to the light as the shadows, with a limitless hunger for experience and knowledge, completely unafraid of life's more frightening opportunities.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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12Undated

Her attachment to language was earthy, physical, and immediate. Pretty words you could eat.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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13Undated

We knew she [Sylvia] was unusual, because of the seriousness with which she was treated, the lofty importance of her job as guest managing editor, and because she was kept fast at her desk when the rest of us were allowed to fool around….I remember we discussed how the editors treater her differently from the rest of us, as if she had been pre-recognized as someone they were expecting great things of.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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14Undated

Before New York, the cracks were already there, but now they began to split open and gape, and the difference between how a thing or a place or a person appears and the reality becomes alarmingly visible, garish.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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15Undated

It is perhaps fortunate that Sylvia was oblivious to the commotion behind the scenes. Apparently, Henry O. Teltscher had written a letter to Betsy Talbot Blackwell, warning her that one of her guest editors was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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16Undated

New clothes left Sylvia reeling with happiness. For Sylvia, a shopping list was a poem. She always shopped alone - it suited her deliberate nature and the artistic joy with which she approached all things aesthetic.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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17Undated

These were the new girls of New York- complete with rapid heartbeats from too much nicotine and coffee. They were nervous and fluttery but completely alluring- the new face of urban femininity.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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18Undated

Cyrilly expected Sylvia – as an intelligent and ambitious young woman – to walk around pale-mouthed and flat-shoed. She saw intellectual inclinations and a taste for fashion as mutually exclusive and assumed that Sylvia would not mind missing fashion shows to work late in the office.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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19Undated

And is not all of life material- based on the material- permeated by the material? Should not one learn, gladly, to utilize the beauty of the fine material? I do not speak of the gross crudities of soporific television, of loud brash convertibles and vulgar display- but rather of grace and line and refinement- and there are wonderful and exciting things that only money can buy, such as theater tickets, books, paintings, travel, lovely clothes- and why deny them when one can have them? The only problem is to work, to stay awake mentally and physically, and NEVER become mentally, physically, spiritually flabby or over complacent!

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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20Undated

All year long Sylvia had been trying to overthrow her guileless, college girl image. She knew "cottons with big full skirts and university personalities" would have looked hopelessly naive in New York. Sylvia wanted to be hard and urban.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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21Undated

Sylvia’s inherent appreciation for beauty as both artist and consumer is evident in her journals and letters…….she wrote beautifully about clothes. She wrote about them with irony and wit mixed in with all the rococo prettiness.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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22Undated

Judgement is so often a thwarted, frustrated expression of envy.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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23Undated

I suppose that was an example of close attention to detail that is common to writers and artists. It is imperative, whether consciously or not, that one observe the vast as well as the infinitesimal in order to create the image or choose accurate words that ring true.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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24Undated

New York is unruly, tangled. The city woos first, then mangles, then pastes back together in a fresh, dazzling mosaic.

Elizabeth Winder / quote

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