Cruel Shoes is a collection of offbeat, mostly humorous essays and short stories by Steve Martin, and his first published book, and is also the title of one of the pieces therein, a satirical short-short story about a woman in a shoe store.
Cruel Shoes was originally released in 1977 as a handmade limited edition of 750 signed and numbered books published by Press of the Pegacycle Lady (Victoria Dailey). The cover is just pale paper over pressboard. It only contained 48 pages and many of the stories that appeared in the trade version were not included.
Famous quotes containing the words cruel and/or shoes:
“Impenetrable in their dissimulation, cruel in their vengeance, tenacious in their purposes, unscrupulous as to their methods, animated by profound and hidden hatred for the tyranny of man—it is as though there exists among them an ever-present conspiracy toward domination, a sort of alliance like that subsisting among the priests of every country.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“We fetch fire and water, run about all day among the shops and markets, and get our clothes and shoes made and mended, and are the victims of these details, and once in a fortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational moment.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)