We are nothing but a string of gut on a stick of bone riding this piece of astral soot for one piteous splinter of eternity.
—Peter De Vries
Being privy to every little thought of those around you seems like a great idea until you read a couple dozen online diaries.
—Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg
You can’t throw a rock in this town without hitting a cartoonist. God knows I’ve tried!
—Jim Woodring
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and
Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
If you run into trouble doing what’s expected, people sympathize with you, while if you try something else and flop everyone says, You see?
—Thomas De Quincey
—Katha Pollitt
When people tell you there’s something wrong with a story, they’re almost always right. When they tell what it is that’s wrong and how it can be fixed, they’re almost always wrong.
Don’t ever write anything you don’t like yourself and if you do like it, don’t take anyone’s advice about changing it.
—Neil Gaiman
—Raymond Chandler
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas.
—George Bernard Shaw
—George W. Bush (Beaverton, Ore., Sep. 25, 2000)
The institution of slavery is as much as curse to the whites as the blacks and kills industry and improvements of every kind. Slavery has deadened all enterprise and prosperity.
Nous ne trouvons guère de gens de bon sens que ceux qui sont de notre avis.
You’re older than you’ve ever been
Time is marching on
we danced in graveyards with vampires till dawn we laughed in the faces of kings never afraid to burn and I hate and I hate and I hate disintegration watching us wither black winged roses that safely changed their COLOR I can’t reach you I can’t reach you give me life give me pain give me myself again oh these little earthquakes here we go again oh these little earthquakes doesn’t take much to RIP us into pieces
Love the smell of napalm in the morning I do
If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, piousness is virtue paying tribute to itself.
I didn’t understand anything. I’m from Chicago.
—An Ohio farmer’s son serving in the Union army, quoted by James McPherson
We hardly ever find reasonable people except among those who share our own opinions.
—La Rochefoucauld
And now you’re even older
And now you’re even older
And now you’re even older
And now you’re older still.
and time
is still marching on
—They Might Be Giants
—Tori Amos
—Ep2’s Yoda, as reimagined by Chris Vargas
—Michael Kinsley
—Donald Rumsfeld (after watching a theatrical performance organized by Václav Havel)
If he’s got enough money, even a dog will be addressed as ’Honorable Sir Bow-wow.’ (Donman isseumyeon gaedo meongcheomji)
The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.
If entertainment ran grocery stores, we’d NEVER get oil cured olives or blue cheese, it would be JUST Coke.
—Korean folk-saying
—Daniel Patrick Moynihan
—Penn Jillette
I’m going to move to Theory someday. Everything works there.
Politics is a dirty business, but if you do not do politics, politics will be done to you.
—Michael Swanwick
—Will Shetterly
Even if it’s broke, if you don’t know how to fix it, don’t.
—Ursula K. LeGuin
Science has learned recently that contempt and indignation are addictive mental states. I mean physically and chemically addictive. Literally! People who are self-righteous a lot are apparently doping themselves rhythmically with auto-secreted surges of dopamine, endorphins and enkephalins. Didn’t you ever ask yourself why indignation feels so good?
I noticed a long time ago that the Universe rewards belief systems. It doesn’t really matter what you believe — it’ll be there and waiting for you if you go and look for it. Decide the universe is, say, run by secret enormous teddy bears, and I can guarantee you’ll immediately start running across evidence that this is true.
If you want to get people off drugs, improve reality.
Those people on daytime TV talking about how their parents never gave them the positive feedback they needed and that’s why they shot them— those are not Minnesotans.
—David Brin
—Neil Gaiman
—David Brower
—Garrison Keillor
Journalism is what somebody doesn’t want you to print. Everything else is publicity.
I’m a science genius girl i won the science fair i wear a white lab coat dna strands in my hair when i clone a human being it will want to hold my hand when i clone a human being it will be a member of my band you can tell from the scars on my arms and cracks in my hips and the dents in my car and the blisters on my lips that i’m not the carefullest of girls
—Jim Hall, Beginning Reporting
—Freezepop
it’s not the way i’m meant to be
it’s just the way the operation made me
—Dresden Dolls
The President wanted to go into Iraq in the worst possible way. And he did.
Zoë: Something ain’t right.
But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose—which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.
—Nancy Pelosi
Wash: Sweetie, we’re crooks. If everything was right, we’d be in jail.
—Firefly
—Richard Feynman
I think my standards have lowered enough that now I think “good design” is when the page doesn’t irritate the living fuck out of me.
It was so stupid I was still reeling from its stupidity the next day. It was the kind of stupid that sticks to your clothing so that people on the street turn around and stare at you with a what’s that smell? look on their faces
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount be posted anywhere. “Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!
—jwz
—jwz, on The Island
—Kurt Vonnegut
If we don’t protect freedom of speech, how will we know who the assholes are? Americans have long been driven by two deep longings. The first is to be left alone. The second is to tell other people what to do. On most moral issues— abortion, porn, video games, alcohol, tobacco, guns— the easiest way out is to inflict our piety on minors. All the righteous satisfaction, none of the libertarian backlash.
You can’t just say ’retarded’ in public like that— people take offense because, you know, many of them are.
—the Onion
—William Saletan
—Christopher Moore
Any time someone says “that’s it, I’m leaving” I ask them whether they’d prefer to live under US domestic policy, or US foreign policy. As bad as things get inside an empire, they’re usually worse in the protectorates. Do not be all man, screw THIS! and go out and like, punch dudes who don’t deserve it. That is a BAD DECISION!
—Jamie Zawinski
—Ryan North
Why were you trying to challenge your audience? What have they ever done to you? I prefer seduction, hypnosis, I don’t want to scream at my audience and demand that they understand my gemlike pearls of wisdom. I once said that a good way to describe my approach to writing is that in the story, in the telling of it, the dialogue, the characters, I introduce myself to the reader, I talk to them interestingly, fascinatingly, calmingly, I get them to sort of follow me up the alleyways of the narrative until they are so far within it that they probably can’t find their way out, and then you can do whatever you want to them.
Then he ran into my knife. He ran into my knife ten times.
—Alan Moore
—June, in
For anyone who doesn’t start off in that position anyway, I think we can agree that life is basically a constant struggle against one’s natural tendency to turn into a pompous old twat.
If fighting is sure to result in victory, then we must fight. Sun Tzu said that, and I’d say he knows a little more about fighting than you do, pal, because he invented it.
—Daniel Davies
—The Soldier, from TF2
I believe that everyone thinks they can write. This is not true. It is true, however, that everyone can direct.
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
—TV director Chuck Lorre
—Liz Taylor
(In response to the question “What advice would you give teenage boys about being a good man?”)
Don’t mistake being an asshole for being a man.
—Dan Savage