Here is the original set, minus some that I edited out.
The ones I’ve added are in Part 2.
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think.
– Unknown
The brain is a wonderful organ: it starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
– Unknown
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It’s easy to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you’d be paranoid too.
– Unknown
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
– Unknown
If you don’t care where you are, then you aren’t lost.
– Unknown
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
– W. Somerset Maugham
If you think nobody cares you’re alive, try missing a couple of college loan re payments.
– Unknown, but probably Ike
There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire someone, or forbid your kids to do it.
– Unknown
Frisbeetarianism:
The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell and make you feel happy to be on your way.
– Unknown
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
– Mark Twain
Yield to temptation… it may not pass your way again.
– Lazarus Long
It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
– Woody Allen, Death, a Play
I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.
– Kehlog Albran
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
– Unknown
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read, and nobody wants to read.
– Mark Twain
NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe? Everything he says is wrong.
GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right.
– G. B. Shaw
Even the best of friends cannot attend each other’s funeral.
– Kehlog Albran
Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.
– Mark Twain
Murphy’s Statement on the Power of Negative Thinking:
It is impossible for an optimist to be pleasantly surprised.
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check three friends. If they’re ok, you’re it.
– Unknown
I like work…
I can sit and watch it for hours.
– Unknown
REPORTER (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization?
GANDHI: I think it would be a good idea.
And Brad’s son was like, 2 feet tall with Brad’s head, and he was like, well, have you ever seen ‘Child’s Play?’
– Cindy Browder, Brad’s Girlfriend
No one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.
– Yogi Berra
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another
– H.L. Menkin
Jazz never dies, it just smells funny
– Frank Zappa
Once you stop believing in Santa Claus, the whole world just goes downhill.
– Tom Clancy, The Sum of All Fears
I had not thought death had undone so many…
– TS Eliot, The Wasteland
A man does not fight to win; it is better to fight in vain…
– Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac
And all should cry ‘Beware! Beware!’
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle ‘round him thrice
And fill your eyes with Holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
– Samuel Coldridge Taylor, Kubla Khan
Herr God, Herr Lucifer,
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
– Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus
Never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
– Unknown
He was a man, take him for all in all, though I shall never look upon his like again…
– Hamlet, I ii 188
Know your enemy,
Defeat your enemy.
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Art is what you can get away with.
– Margret Atwood
I’m beginning to feel like the curator of my own museum. A huge museum no one will ever visit, looked after for no one but myself.
– Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
Time I had some time alone…
– REM, It’s the end of the world as we know it…
For some the fairest thing on the dark earth is Thermopylae,
And the Spartan phalanx lowering lances to die.
– Sappho
Practically perfect people never let their good thinking be muddled by sentiment.
– Mary Poppins
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, but seeming so for my peculiar end. For when my outward action doth demonstrate the native act and figure of my heart in compliment extern, ‘tis not long after but I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at. I am not what I am.
– Iago, Othello Ii 61-67
You miss too much these days if you stop to think.
– U2, The End of the World
Boredom is a sure sign that you’re too intelligent for your surroundings.
– Catherine Pierson
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
– Milton, Paradise Lost
Real Art has the capacity to make us nervous.
– Susan Sontag
Business is war.
– Japanese Proverb
If you don’t want Japan to buy it, don’t sell it.
– Aiko Morita
No, what they do is cut off your ear and make you paint for the rest of your life…
– John Rutland on DUI penalties in France
There comes a time when you have to put principle aside and do what’s right.
– M!ch!gan! Politician
Happiness is a series of well-timed exits.
– Groo’s Sage
How the hell do they fit Kalamazoo on a sweatshirt?
– Elise Richards
Eternal nothingness is Ok if you’re dressed for it.
– Woody Allen, Without Feathers
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
in the forests of the night,
what immortal hand or eye
could frame thy fearful symmetry?
– William Blake, The Tyger
My name is Ozymandias
King of Kings!
Look upon my works ye mighty
and despair…
– Pb Shelly, Ozymandias
The reason I’m fishin 4 a new religion is my church makes me fall asleep. They’re praising a God that watches you weep, and doesn’t want you to do a damn thing about it. When they want change the preacher says shout it, does shoutin’ bring about change I doubt it. All shouting does is make you lose your voice.
– Arrested Development, Fishin’ 4 Religion
Nice customs curtsey to great kings.
– Henry V, Henry V
We should just haul them out of class one day, shoot them, then come back for the teachers.
– Catherine Pierson, speaking of stupid people
Don’t talk of love, for I’ve heard the word before. It’s sleeping in my memory. I won’t disturb the slumber of feelings that have died; if I never loved I never would have cried…
– Simon & Garfunkle, I am a Rock
Artlessness is the ultimate art…
– Japanese proverb
My version of ‘Sting’ would be ‘Nudge Softly’ or the like…
– Randy Chepigan, 88.5 WXPN
I do not threaten, I merely advise caution.
– Neil Gaiman, Ramadan
"Sleep around all you want but don’t get married."
– Wisconsin lawyer Debra Koenig’s career advice to a class of seventh-grade girls on Take Your Daughter to Work Day
What the world needs now is another Frank Sinatra so I can get you into bed…
– Cracker, What the World Needs Now
Science speaks to the Universe in words that bind it to reality. Magic speaks to the Universe in words that it cannot ignore…
– Neil Gaiman, The Books of Magic
True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft is thought but ne’er so well expressed
– Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism
I am looking for someone who can take as much as I give, give back as much as I need, and still have the will to live…
– Indigo Girls, Blood & Fire
It’s been so long since I made love I can’t even remember who gets tied up…
– Joan Rivers
Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?
– Jules Feiffer
How many Philadelphians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Three - One to change the bulb, one to be a witness, and the third to shoot the witness
How many Teamsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Fifteen…You got a problem with that?
How many anti-choicers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Six - One to screw the bulb, and five to testify that it was lit from the moment they began screwing
It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.
– JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit
I thought of having children but I’ve gone and changed my mind. It’s hard enough to watch the news, let alone explain it to a child, to cast his eyes past nature, over fields of rape and war and tell him without flinching not to fear where he’s been born.
– Everything but the Girl, The Night I Heard Caruso Sing
I don’t want comfort: I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin…
– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
My lucky star is a black hole.
– Bob Brinton
…With a sign on the door saying "Doing laundry; may never return."
– Delaying the Heat Death of the Universe
When he said the world was a piece of shit, you felt like you were right there…
– Joel Kulp
I’m very well known for pulling large pieces of furniture out of my ass…
– Jerky Boys
Living on the edge for me is going to some concert where it’s hard to park…
– Randy Chepigan, 88.5 WXPN
…The room always gets suddenly warmer when you read…
– Rebecca Piorkowski.
"…Those voodoo gods… Never trust a god who grins all the time and wears a top hat, that’s my motto."
"Really? That’s a very odd motto…"
– Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
I’ve never been very sure about what is right. I am not sure there is such a thing as right. Or wrong. Just places to stand.
– Death, via Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
Belief is one of the most powerful organic forces in the multiverse. It may not be able to move mountains, exactly. But it can create someone who can.
– Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
Take care of those you call your own
and keep good company.
– Tom, quoting Queen
When you break the rules, break ‘em good and hard.
– Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters
…With two lovers there is always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
– W. Somerset Maugham, Red
…The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
– W. Somerset Maugham, Red
When you stand between two mirrors you’re spread out among the images, your whole soul is pulled out thin, and somewhere in the distant images a dark part of you might get out and come looking for you, if you aren’t careful.
– Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
There’s no point in killing an opponent… There’s no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure.
– Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
Even though a kiss is not the truth, it is what we wish to be true…
– Steve Martin, LA Story
Gentlemen, you’ve heard of mass communication: Telegraph, telephone, tell a woman…
– Mr. K. Miller Sr.
My mother is far worse; a snake bit her once and died.
– I, Claudius
When we hold each other in the darkness, it doesn’t make the darkness go away. The bad things are still out there. When we hold each other we feel…not safe, but better. "It’s all right," we whisper, "I’m here. I love you." And we lie; "I’ll never leave you." Just for a moment or two the darkness doesn’t seem so bad. When we hold each other.
– Neil Gaiman, Hellblazer No. 27
"I knew the two of you would get along like a house on fire." Screams, flames, people running for safety…
– Terry Pratchett, Pyramids
Friends, my sister? I thought we were family.
– Neil Gaiman, Brief Lives Number Six
Do people not realize that when you marry a stupid person, you’re playing Russian roulette with the intelligence of your children?
– Rebecca P.
To strive,
To seek,
To find,
And not to yield…
– Tennyson
When the gods choose to punish us, they are merely answering our prayers.
– Oscar Wilde
At college age, you can tell who is best at taking tests and going to school, but you can’t tell who the best people are. That worries the Hell out of me.
– Barnaby C. Keeney
Of course God will forgive me; that’s his business.
– Heinrich Herine
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
– George Burns
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
– Mel Brooks
Sartre (on arriving in heaven): It’s not what I expected.
God: What did you expect?
Sartre: Nothing.
– SCTV
We can beat any man in any land in any game that he can name for any amount that he can count.
– USAF Fighter Squadron Motto, quoted by Richard Bach
I have nothing to declare, except my genius…
– Oscar Wilde, passing through customs
There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even stops to notice that you stare about…
– Richard Adams, Watership Down
Plays…Maidens aspiring to Godheads and vice versa!
– Tom Stoppard, Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
There are a great many white people in this world who are as determined to see the Negro free as we are… (therefore) this new militancy must be kept within understanding because black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy…
– Martin Luther King Jr., speaking of Malcom X
The time has come for closing books and long, last looks, my sir. And as I leave, I know that I am leaving my best-friend. A friend who taught me right from wrong and weak from strong; That’s a lot to learn. What can I give you in return?
– Michael Stipe, To Sir With Love
Of course I’m going to marry him; he’s my best-friend…
– Jenny Zoto, on Charlie
I like letters, and I like words, I’m just not too sure about complete sentences…
– J. Gudmundsdottir, The Player
Guys, I am mating with this rock…
– Amy, Land/Sea
I would give my body for an orange.
– Amy, Land/Sea
I just can’t wait for a hot shower and a hot shave!
– Dave, Land/Sea
You mean you brought deodorant?
– Meredith, Land/Sea
I used to call my boy-friend "Little Asparagus-tip."
– Becky, Land/Sea
I think I’ll take my shirt off… I smell…
– Meredith, Land/Sea
…Goddamnit, they’re all buck nekked!
– Rob, Land/Sea (Day One)
Every place I touch, it swells!
– Emily, Land/Sea
And in the streets the children screamed, the lovers cried and the poets dreamed. Not a word was spoken, the church bells all were broken. And the three men I admire most, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost they caught the last train for the coast, the day the music died.
– Tom McClean, American Pie
It’s all fun and games until someone loses a boob.
– Julie, Sept. 93
Q: Telling someone that smoking is bad for them doesn’t always work. What would you do to help them quit?
A: Go to a smokers house and pretend to smoke and die.
– Susan Bucher and Alexis, Age 8, The All Better Book
They’re all recovering Cure fans:
"Roses are black, Violets are black,
Everything is black, *sniff*"
– Greg, quoting someone about coffeehouse people
You think you’re so smart, but I’ve seen you naked and I’ll probably see you naked again.
– Barenaked Ladies, Blame It On Me
I like soup, I like ice-cream sandwiches too,
I like fish sticks, but I love you…
– Barenaked Ladies, I Love You
You know, I bet giants would use bean-bag chairs for hacky-sacks
– Charmane, drunk, 10/3/93
Pause you, who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
– Dickens, Great Expectations
"Why don’t you cry again, you little wretch?"
"Because I’ll never cry for you again," Said I. Which was, I suppose, as false a declaration as ever was made; for I was inwardly crying for her then, and I know what I know of the pain she caused me afterwards.
– Dickens, Great Expectations
I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But I felt that the kiss was given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and it was worth nothing.
– Dickens, Great Expectations
What’s up with you and bigamy?
– Mike, 10/4/93
You can consistently win debates if you consistently use two words: "baby" and "kill."
– Dr. J.C. Willke, vice-president, National Right to Life Committee at a pro-life ( which means anti-abortion) convention, teaching others to teach the pro-life position (St. Louis, 1978)
"Conservative" - n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
– Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
…He became meek again, and told me that the moment he began to realize capital, it was his intention to marry this young lady. He added as a self-evident proposition, engendering low spirits, "But you can’t marry, you know, when you’re looking about you."
– Dickens, Great Expectations
I don’t care if it hurts, I want control
I want a perfect body, I want a perfect soul
(I want you to notice, when I’m not around)
I wish I were special,
You’re so fucking special…
– Radiohead, Creep
Yes, I’d like to place a collect call, overseas…the number is 0107-095-295 90521… yes… yes, that is Russia… yes, the Kremlin. Thank you, I know that, ma’am. Yes, Good-bye.
– Pb Sanderson and Simeon Frang, October 10, 1993
I mean, I don’t want to call them a woman just because they have a female voice because that’s… sexist.
– Todd, 10/13/93
Everything seemed to race past him; he just sat there, eating. And then half-way though dinner he made himself look across at Clarissa for the first time. She was talking to a young man on her right. He had a sudden revelation. "She will marry that man," he said to himself. He didn’t even know his name.
– Victoria Woolfe, Mrs Dalloway
That was his own affair, said Septimus.
– Victoria Woolfe, Mrs Dalloway
I need more money and power and less shit from you people.
– Thick’s key-chain.
But where was God now, with heaven full of astronoughts, and the Lord overthrown? I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don’t think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very own nature betray. I miss God who was my friend.
– Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are not the only fruit.
There are so many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names. Naming is a difficult and time consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on wild nights who can call you home? Only one who knows your name.
– Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are not the only fruit.
A homosexual is further away from a woman than a rhinoceros.
– Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are not the only fruit.
I’m not making this up.
– Gail Griffin, describing K College in her book, Calling
I saw literature as a fantasy, no less absorbing for all its irrelevance - a parallel life, as dreams shadow waking but never intersect it.
– Edmund White, A Boy’s Own Story
At certain crucial moments - an emergency or an opportunity - one must act first and think later.
– Edmund White, A Boy’s Own Story
The imagination is not the consolation people pretend. It can even be regarded as the admission of some sort of failure.
– Edmund White, A Boy’s Own Story
In writing one draws in the rest, the forgotten parts.
– Edmund White, A Boy’s Own Story
Energy in itself is a sort of redemption. No wonder we admire Satan. But if the Devil were listless, if he were a pale man in his underwear who watched television by day behind closed venetian blinds - oh if that were the devil I would fear him.
– Edmund White, A Boy’s Own Story
Hell is God’s Absence.
– Edmund White, A Boy’s Own Story
Katy sat in a deckchair
and Katy looked at the sun.
Katy ate an ice-cream
and Katy looked like fun.
– Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are not the only fruit.
They are different kinds of treachery, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it.
– Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are not the only fruit.
Cats can count on the fire brigade and Rapunzel was lucky with her hair.
– Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are not the only fruit.
Acknowledge, swear, and move on.
– Simeon Frang
Dude, I am so annoying, it’s funny.
– Simeon, Nov. 3 1993
Cool as fuck…
– The Flipside
If only all the contradictory voices shouting in my head would calm down and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn’t care as long as they sang without dissonance.
– Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Never miss a good chance to shut up.
– Anonymous
This town is so dull that the tide went out and refused to come back.
– Fred Allen
Never mistake motion for action.
– Hemingway
My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.
– Errol Flynn
I base my fashion taste on what doesn’t itch.
– Gilda Radner
A bore is someone who, when you ask them how they are, tells you.
– Anonymous
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
– Abraham Lincoln
There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it.
– John Raper
I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something.
– Jackie Mason
I’m trying to arrange my life so I don’t have to be present.
– Woody Allen
There’s nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning won’t aggravate.
– Unknown
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
– Churchill
I hate quotations.
– Emerson
What died?
– Motto for New Jersey suggested by Mort Saul
It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.
– Tom Lehrer
In six pages I can’t even say hello.
– James Mitchner
California is a great place to live if you’re an orange.
– Fred Allen
I like life. It’s something to do.
– Ronnie Shakes
No.
– Amy Carter if asked if she had a message for the children of America.
Anything too stupid to be spoken is sung.
– Voltaire
If you want to make it in show business, get the hell out of Oregon.
– Sophie Tucker
If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Hard work never killed anybody, but why take the chance?
– Edgar Bergen
It matters not whether you win or lose. What matters is whether I win or lose.
– Darin Weinberg
To speak well, have a good beginning and a strong ending, and put them very close together.
– Unknown
Do not make loon soup.
– Eskimo Cookbook
Wouldn’t it be great if when I came in here the lights went up or down and you’re going, "Ah! I’m outta here: Drop/Add."
– Dr. Paul Davis, on the joys of cinematography, Nov. ‘93
"Nice", "Weird", "Shitty": All right, we’re building up our technical terms for the first quarter.
– Dr. Paul Davis, Intro. to Novel, first or second day of class
I wonder is David Mamet ever invited his parents to any of his plays?
– Ike Sanderson, Nov. ‘93
Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.
– Oscar Wilde
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
– Oscar Wilde
It is better to be beautiful than to be good; but it is better to be good than to be ugly.
– Oscar Wilde
Instant gratification takes too long.
– Carrie Fisher
Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.
– Brendan Behen
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
– Oscar Wilde
It is quite beneath the dignity of a person holding a Bachelor of Arts degree to engage in such a vulgar occupation as the writing of novels.
– Fukuzawa Yukichi, c. 1868
Chickenshits.
– Paul Davis to our silent Intro-Novel class
No, you don’t understand Feminism at all. It’s supposed to be equal domination…
– Kelly
They promised that they’d write each other, but they knew that boys their age hardly ever wrote anyone at all…
– Chaim Potok, The Tree of Here
Basketball isn’t my job.
– Michael Jordan
Santa Claus has the right idea; visit people once a year.
– Victor Borge
Oh! Why am I not writing a novel instead of a sad, true story?
– Karamzin, Poor Lisa
Puskin’s favorite punctuation is the period. Gogol’s is the semi-colon; and at first glance, the profusion of dependant clauses and qualifications may bring to mind a fishing-reel’s backlash.
– Carl R. Proffer, From Kramzin to Bunin…
One man’s heresy is another man’s cliché…
– Carl R. Proffer, From Kramzin to Bunin…
I would rather be seated between any two women than any two men at a dinner party.
– John Updike, Quoted by EB White
Good deeds never go unpunished.
– EB White
You see, I don’t have any precise goal in life. I just have the desire to do what seems to me to be the right thing at the moment in the hope that I will end up with something bearable…
– Asimiv, Nemisis.
Well I need a man like a fish needs a fishbowl!
– Kristin on Gloria Steinem
A bore is someone who persists in holding onto his own view even after we have enlightened him with ours.
– Anonymous
We danced in graveyards with vampires till dawn, we laughed in the faces of king, never afraid to burn…
– Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes
Take two bodies and you twirl them into one, their hearts and their bones, and they won’t come undone.
– Paul Simon, Hearts and Souls
It’s amazing: You look like you’re a normal person, but actually you are the angel of death.
– Sally, When Harry Met Sally.
It is the nature of walls that they should fall.
– Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are not the only fruit.
People are not good or bad; they are only more or less unhappy and deserving of sympathy.
– Mirsky on Realism
Of course all the good ones are taken, Paul. Your job is to take them back; if you can break them up, they weren’t meant to be together in the first place.
– Anon.
A ladder! Quick! A ladder!
– Nikolai Gogol’s last words
The pursuit of knowledge is, by its very nature, arrogant. It is violent.
– W. Schmichael
Sons follow their fathers, unless you’re Jesus, and then you want to.
– W. Schmichael
Brother, I am standing in my gallery and I am holding your sigil… will you answer me?
– Death, via Neil Gaiman, Sandman
He’s in jail because he killed someone with an axe. Even Texas won’t allow that…
– W. Schmichael
A temptation is a reasonably viable alternative whose price is often too high and that is the problematic element, and that is what we must keep in mind: What, down the road, am I going to pay for this? It is a dangerous offer.
– W. Schmichael
I was going to invite you all over to watch "Jesus Christ Superstar" Tuesday, but I forgot that it was my wife’s birthday. That would not be cool.
– W. Schmichael
I realized later that, however childish I might remain, actual youth had been pressed out of me in just the three days that it took me to cross the sixty miles between Can Tho and Saigon.
– Michael Herr, Dispatches
There was a black Marine called Philly Dog who’d been a gang lord in Philadelphia and who was looking forward to some street fighting after six months in the jungle, he could show the kickers what he could do with some city ground.
– Michael Herr, Dispatches
On the back of his flak jacket he’d once written, "Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I shall fear no evil, because I’m the meanest motherfucker in the Valley."
– Michael Herr, Dispatches
Every time I had a vision of myself lying dead somewhere, it was up there, in the Highlands.
– Michael Herr, Dispatches
It was the feeling you’d had when you were much, much younger and undressing a girl for the first time.
– Michael Herr, Dispatches
I learned to shoot more accurately because my teachers held the targets.
– Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior
Any merchant who advertises ‘Honest Scales’ must have been thinking about weighing them.
– Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior
I do not believe in old age. I do not believe in getting tired.
– Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior
I don’t know…It’s as if I had turned into a different person. The new life around me was so complete; it pulled me away. You became people in a book I had read a long time ago.
– Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior
Gods you avoid won’t hurt you.
– Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior
I had vampire nightmares; every night the fangs grew longer, and my angel wings turned pointd and black. I hunted humans down in the long woods and shadowed them with my blackness. Tears dripped from my eyes, but blood dripped from my fangs, blood of the people I was supposed to love.
– Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior
I’d like to go to New Society Village someday and find out exactly how far I can walk before people stop talking like me.
– Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior
You are in a city. You look up and can’t see the stars and that doesn’t bother you as much as it should. You don’t know what’s wrong but maybe more’s wrong than you want to know.
– John Wideman, Philadelphia Fire
Maybe he’s missed the city. Or maybe he’s home to remind himself how much he hates the whole stinking mess, the funky air, the slow belly rub of everybody’s nerves on everybody’s nerves till some poor soul can’t take it and lights a match and burns the whole gig down around his head.
– John Wideman, Philadelphia Fire
Answer’s always yes. Yes, I’ll take the money. Don’t care how much blood’s on it. Don’t care if it’s my blood. Yours. I wasn’t the one responsible. I’d prefer clean money but till clean drops down from heaven this will do. Yes. I’ll take it. Somebody will take it. Mize well be me. Money’s money. None of it’s clean.
– John Wideman, Philadelphia Fire
Pretend for a moment that none of this happened. Pretend that it never happened before nor will again. Pretend we can imagine events into existence or out of existence. Pretend we have the power to live our lives as we choose. Imagine our fictions imagining us.
– John Wideman, Philadelphia Fire
At all times and in all fields the explanation by fire is a rich explanation.
– Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire
What’s the point?
Doing it. That’s the point…
– John Wideman, Philadelphia Fire
Flat shells, smoke, recoil filled truck, one side ablaze with the spitting triple battery. Bohn’s cheek was blue and red, a great wattle under the punishment of the gun, his eye steely down the barrel. In his corner, taking aim, Luke trained upon the dancing throng and with pinched mouth, bile rising from his stomach, held his fire
"Shoot," a voice at his ear, and he pulled the trigger.
– John Hawkes, Beetle-Leg
In a while I will miss you, but for now I am feeling rather free…
– Suddenly, Tammy! Mt. Rushmore
I’ve seen this happen in other peoples lives,
and now it’s happening in mine.
– Smiths, That joke isn’t funny anymore
She looks good dead, man!
– Rob, on seeing Kim Basinger in Tom Petty’s video "Mary Jane’s Last Dance"
I walk by her side, and the darkness lifts from my soul. I walk with her, and I hear the gentle beating of mighty wings…
– Neil Gaiman, The Sound of Her Wings
As we were sitting together, suddenly there came into her eyes a look that I had never seen there before. My lips moved towards hers. We kissed each other. I can’t describe to you what I felt at that moment. It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect moment of rose-coloured joy…
– Oscar Wilde, of all people
No longer able to do paperwork, or even scan the Ellsworth American, he liked to be read to. That last year, he was not interested in other people’s books. He wanted to hear the writings of EB White… They got through just about all of White’s published writings, some of them several times over.
– Linda Davis on EB White
Psychoanalysis feeds on intensity, as though life were all flame and no ash.
– Edmund White, A Boy’s Own Story
The only way to behave towards a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.
– Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
He went to France to save an England which considered almost entirely of Shakespeare’s plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in the square.
– Victoria Woolfe, Mrs Dalloway
What I figure is this. It’s not his fault. Y’know? It’s like, you hang out with poets and them guys, you’re bound ta go a little flaky…
– Neil Gaiman, Brief Lives Number Six
You I thought I knew you, you I cannot judge. You I thought you knew me.
– R.E.M., Nightswiming
Battle not ye monsters,
lest ye become a monster…
Marriage is death to an artist.
– Hannah and Her Sisters
If you look at paintings of Jesus, he looks like a girlie-boy.
– Dr. Gathje
Live your life like a work of art…
– James, PGSA
I mean, look what happened to Jesus: he got his ass kicked, he ended up on a cross.
– Dr. Gathje, on the pros and cons of pacifism
Alone, in the grey shadows, Death tapdanced. He pulled himself together, adjusted his scythe, and waited silently for his cue. He’d never missed one yet. He was going to go out there and slay them.
– Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters
How many psychiatrists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Only one, but the bulb really has to want to change.
He never thinks at all… and that prevents him from thinking wrong.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
It wasn’t that Mrs. Cake wasn’t a religious person…she was a very religious person indeed. There wasn’t a temple, church, mosque, or small group of standing stones anywhere in the city that she hadn’t attended at one time or another, as a result of which she was more feared than an Age of Enlightenment…
– Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
…A coach-load of excitable Japanese tourists were measuring the policeman’s horse and taking down its specifications. No doubt they are going to copy it and flood the world with cheap police horses. Will we English never learn?
– Adrian Mole
I asked her how her daughter was qualified to be a writer. Mrs. Ball said that her daughter was dropped on her head as a child and has been ‘a bit queer’ ever since.
– Adrian Mole
This is how it was meant to be: You, a shotgun, and a whole bunch of imps…
– bMatt, on life and Doom2
And how about Macedonia? They’re a third-rate province of a third-rate country. [*pause*] Actually, they’re a third-rate province of about three third-rate countries.
– Jason Crandall (8/19/94, 2:53am)
What do you expect! I’m an English… (pause)… (another pause)… (long long pause)… um, (small voice) minor…
– Pb, reacting to the accusation that he was writing too much, forgetting he’d just changed his major.
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and praise worthy.
– Ambrose Bierce
I have not yet begun to fuck!
– Alex
Well, I guess that’s good for some of us at this table.
– Mat
I forgot that at seven I’ll be slamming my body against someone in black leather, so I’ll have to have the study session at five.
– Dr. Paul Davis, Oct. ‘93
You can measure a man’s worth by the breed of person he throws out of his office.
– Dave Sim, Cerebus
The things women did while listening to this album were the biggest threats to my virginity…
– Paul, on Violent Femmes’ first album.
If you are going to invent a new particle, you might as well invent a useful one.
– John A. Bahcall, Neutrino Astrophysics
You can trace any social problem to one of two things; Economics and Great Britain.
– Greg Blase
If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
That would be fine with me. His hair’s pretty cool.
– Lou (Aaron’s horny friend), in response to a question concerning his thoughts on Colin Sheaff’s participation in his orgies
None of you understand. I’m not locked up in here with you. You’re locked up in here with me.
– Rorschach, to prisoners, Watchmen VI
People are always talking about tradition, but they forget we have a tradition of a few hundred years of nonsense and stupidity, that there is a tradition of idiocy, incompetence, and crudity.
– Hugo Demartini
There are a hundred movies about Catholicism - especially the weird parts.
– Dr. Dorrien
Why not? We’ve gone in there and watched… five bucks…
– Mat, to Whit, who doesn’t want to go in and talk to Matt and Steph, who’re alone in the other room.
It matters not whether you win or lose. What matters is whether I win or lose.
– Darin Weinberg
No, you can, if they’ve admitted to using it…
– Index Editors, on BackPage ‘crack’ jokes
Hot! I mean, hard! I mean, Too much! I mean stop!
– Alison Crane
Eliz: Sex isn’t dirty!
PbYaga: Then you’re doing it wrong!
Pb: Okay…raise your hand if you’ve had sex within the past six months…
Chris (Only one raising his hand)…Not a lot!
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.
– Neil Gaiman, Sandman 60
Sprite and France were the first things to go…
– Pb to bathMatt, on nuclear war
…Just gonna go to bed like there’s no teeth to be brushed: Anarchy for the mouth! …Would it have been better to say ‘armageddon’? I can say it again…
– Matt, trying to get on the computer
Science is hard.
– Gary Feinberg, nuclear physicist
Atwood’s 14th Corollary:
No books are lost by lending except those you particularly wanted to keep.
Gun control is Communism.
– Liberty Baptist church, Bad Axe, MI
I mean, if I were stuck in a room with Hitler, at least we’d talk…
– Pb, on the merits of "Rude, Inconsiderate, Exciting People" over "Boring" people
We’re going to the North… away from the South…
– Alex "Otto" Vinter
Drive a Volvo? I don’t want to live as long as a Volvo will make me live. It’s like wrapping yourself in plastic and freezing yourself in time.
– Andy Carra
Peer’s Law of Research:
The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem.
Doing the wrong thing could make you very, very, VERY happy.
– Dr. Karen Struening, on Kant and utilitarianism
Well, I’ll be a Yemi’s uncle!
– Matt Priest
There weren’t enough Portugese in the world to hold all the places they had…
– Dr. Sloan, on colonization
To speak well, have a good beginning and a strong ending, and put them very close together.
– Unknown
Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.
– Brendan Behen
Nuke a godless communist gay baby seal for Christ.
– T-shirt
This is how I see it; it is now one o’clock in the morning. We have seven hours until breakfast.
– Michael, getting on IRC
I have done a terrible thing, I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.
– Wolfgang Pauli, nuclear physicist
I didn’t say it was the best thing, just that she was good at it…
– Renny, on sex with Dina
Peter, you could never replace me…
– DeAnna, on Pb moving into "her" suite
Oh I dunno; I can be passive-aggressive and rude when I want to…
– Pb, in reply
When academics are rioting, they stand up and talk without raising their hands.
– Wickstrom
No, I think the English are much more cat people.
– Kelly
Do you know how many Winnebagos they’d sell if they came with bimbos?
– Renny
For even if the allotted space of life be short, it is long enough in which to live honorably and well.
– Cicero, Concerning Old Age
I just bought a dragon, I’m kinda low…
– Andy "J-re" Carra, on gold
…those writing things, what do we call them, exams…
– Dr. Dorrien
Ooh! Ow! I need a pickle!
– Pb, injured and running to the fridge
One time I took my Danish friend to a coffee house to teach her the words ‘pseudo intellectual’ and ‘pretentious.’ She still uses them.
– Pb’s friend Greg, on coffeehouse people
"Who ordered that?" said Isadore Rabi upon hearing about this discovery [of the muon] while lunching in a Chinese restaurant…
– Sheldon L. Glashow, The Charm of Physics
Harris’s Lament:
All the good ones are taken.
Pb’s Corollary to the Lament:
Make them think they’re wrong.
It really sucks when you fuck your own queen.
– DeAnna
Let’s make little quotations in the air every time he says the word "sabbatical".
– Matt, on his Improv Prof. Ed Menta
That’s not funny… That’s like, true…
– Matt Priest
And don’t mess with Victor; he’s from the Cartel.
– Andy, on Victor’s OTC drug assessments.
The French couldn’t imagine that Africans would ever not want to be French. It hurt their feelings.
– Dr. Sloan
I’ll begin by putting some of our History majors on the spot, which is a bad pedagogical device, but I’m going to do it anyway.
– Dr. Barclay
And then there was my great-cousin (or something) who spent 50 years trying to convert one Indian. I think he was doing it wrong.
– Steve Rohde
It is quite beneath the dignity of a person holding a Bachelor of Arts degree to engage in such a vulgar occupation as the writing of novels.
– Fukuzawa Yukichi, c. 1868
The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.
– Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Afterword
The ability to extrapolate from isolated segments and strings of text to the extreme, and, one can converse in a logical and rational conversation with those who’ve actually read the entire text.
– Pb, on what his English major has taught him
Shanahan’s Law:
The length of a meeting rises with the square of the number of people present.
I feel so female in this room…
– April, Friday night
So does Andy.
– Paul, Friday night
I mean, who would actually call you up and say "I’m on the Calendar Committee, and we’re not on crack…"?
– Matt Priest, defending the Backpage
Lust isn’t necessarily a negative emotion. You have two people here willing to argue that with you.
– Michael, standing next to Chris
What is the difference between the Marine Corps and the Boy Scouts?
The Boy Scouts have adult leadership.
– Michael Herr, Dispatches
You do not have to sit in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.
– Annie Dillard, Expedition to the Pole
By the grace of AEC, BNL, God, Green and Hayworth (alphabetical order), we should see neutrinos.
– Leon Lederman, 1961 International Conference on Instrumentation for High Energy Physics
Thank you, Peter, for discovering yet another conversational minefield.
– Bert, on the ex-ness of DeAnna and Mat
Wait… Data’s getting more than me? I don’t like that…
– Renny, hearing that Tasha Yar fucked Data
You didn’t even drink!
– Chris, trying to note the philosophical difference between his and Pb’s fall quarter, and why Pb was in the wrong.
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
It’s not that I’ve lost a wife, but gained a son.
– Paul Friedman, on his ex-wife (47) marrying Todd Lorback (26)
How many Marxists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
None - the old light bulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.
Issawi’s Law of The Course of Progress:
Things get steadily worse.
I love that word. It’s a very nineteenth-century word… Actually Rousseau uses it a lot, too, so it must be an eighteenth-century word, too.
– Dr. Struening, on "yoke"
Start each day with a smile and get it over with.
– W.C. Fields
This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go.
– Oscar Wilde’s last words
