Extended excerpt  [Magazine essay reprint, in Alexander collection. Section one, essay one.]:

“Gossip is often true. Sometimes it becomes true. People get hooked on their own bad press and begin to act out the new roles being written for them. But mostly, gossip is half-true. Between the two poles of whole-truth and half-truth is slung the chancy hammock in which we all rock.” (p. 15)

Source: Library – Talking Woman (1976 Delcorte Press) online via Open Library [free subscription service]: https://archive.org/stream/talkingwoman00alex#page/14/mode/2up/search/chancy+hammock

Extended excerpt [Magazine essay reprint, in Alexander collection. Section five, essay eleven – italics original to cited text.]:

“It is this playwright’s talent first to make you smile at Middle America’s family foibles, and then to ram that smile down your throat, and I wish that Sticks and Bones, which a year ago won a top prize on Broadway, could receive the broad national audience it deserves. Good drama should sandpaper the mind. Still, the network is right that the nation’s attention is “emotionally dominated” just now by the images of returning POWs and others who have suffered the ravages of war.” (p. 229)

Source link: Library – Talking Woman (1976 Delacorte Press) online via Open Library [free subscription service]: https://archive.org/stream/talkingwoman00alex#page/228/mode/2up/search/sandpaper

Extended excerpt  [Magazine essay reprint, in Alexander collection. Section three, essay nine.]:

“Most difficult is the willingness to be complicated. I reserve my greatest admiration for those who continue to struggle to embrace the whole impossible tangle of snakes that is our society; those who fight to identify and strengthen human connections, and defeat polarizing forces that strain to drive us apart.” (p. 154)

Source link: Library – Talking Woman (1976 Delacorte Press) online via Open Library [free subscription service]: https://archive.org/stream/talkingwoman00alex#page/154/mode/2up/search/impossible+tangle

Extended excerpt [Magazine essay reprint, in Alexander collection. Section four, essay seven.]:

“Mind and body are not to be taken lightly. Their connection is intimate and mysterious, and better mapped by poets than pornographers. For all the floodlit, hairy close-ups, the spasm may be in the flesh, but the feeling is in the mind.” (pp. 177-178)

Source link: Library – Talking Woman (1976 Delacorte Press) online via Open Library [free subscription service]: https://archive.org/stream/talkingwoman00alex#page/176/mode/2up/search/intimate+and+mysterious

Extended excerpt [Magazine essay reprint, in Alexander collection. Section II, essay one. Alexander started the essay by asking, “What does a lady who travels a lot require of her favorite city?”]:

“There is such a city. It is Dublin. The mark of a true crush whether the object be man, woman, or city, is that you fall in love first and grope for reasons afterward, and that is what happened a few years ago with me and Dublin.” (p. 25)

Source link: “Dublin is my sure thing” (2 September 1966) LIFE magazine, online via LIFE & Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=61UEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=There+is+such+a+city.+It+is+Dublin.+The+mark+of+a+true+crush+whether+the+object+be+man,+woman,+or+city,+is+that+you+fall+in+love+first 

Extended excerpt [Magazine essay reprint in Alexander collection]:

“The paradox of reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind’s eye. The paradox of Patricia Hearst is that no one noticed her before she was kidnapped. She was made visible by her disappearance.” (p. 118)

Source link: Library – Talking Woman (1976 Delacorte Press) online via Open Library [free subscription service]: https://archive.org/stream/talkingwoman00alex#page/118/mode/2up/search/paradox+of+reality

Extended excerpt [Magazine essay reprint, in Alexander collection. Section four, essay seven.]:

“The real weakness of all porn, it seems to me, is its necessary repetition. Since the body is finite, with only seven or eight immutable orifices, the pornographer must continually invent new sauces for old meats.” (p. 176)

Source link: Library – Talking Woman (1976 Delacorte Press) online via Open Library [free subscription service]: https://archive.org/stream/talkingwoman00alex#page/176/mode/2up/search/old+meats

Extended excerpt  [Magazine essay – Alexander defending special education services for academically advanced children]:

“The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous. What was also troubling this mother, I suppose, was the notion that special education for the specially gifted is somehow “undemocratic.” It appears to be setting up an intellectual elite. It smacks somehow of the dirty word “discrimination.” (pp. 33-34)

Source link: “Neglected kids – the bright ones” (24 June 1966) online via LIFE magazine & Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=o1UEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA26&dq=The+sad+truth+is+that+excellence+makes+people+nervous.++What+was+also+troubling+this+mother,+I+suppose,+was+the+notion+that+special+education 

Extended excerpt [Magazine essay – Alexander is referring to the Roman fountain & statue of Marforio, an ancient river god]:

“You know of course that these gigantica are not considered first-rate art,” a Roman friend remarks. I say it is not the art but my own response that matters. In finding Marforio I have found astonishment. Marforio is making me see Rome. The fountains spout higher, the marble flesh grows warm, the fading frescoes glow again and the winds of baroquery blow wilder at all the gesturing angels.

This is what holidays, travels, vacations are about. It is not really rest or even leisure we chase. We strain to renew our capacity for wonder, to shock ourselves into astonishment once again.” (p. 24)

Source link: “The Roman Astonishment” (29 Sept. 1967) LIFE; via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=clYEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA24&dq=This+is+what+holidays#v=onepage&q=This%20is%20what%20holidays&f=false