Start Quotes (page 72)
If I'm a guy who doesn't seem so merry,
It's just because I'm so misunderstood.
When I was young I ate a dictionary,
And that did not do me a bit of good.
For I've absorbed so many words and phrases—
They drive me dizzy when I want to speak.
I start explaining but each person gazes
As if I spoke in Latin or in Greek.
Ira Gershwin
....there is an ending [to Infinite Jest] as far as I'm concerned. Certain kind of parallel lines are supposed to start converging in such a way that an "end" can be projected by the reader somewhere beyond the right frame. If no such convergence or projection occured to you, then the book's failed for you.
David Foster Wallace
1. Never forget--"they" are always the enemy.2. Just remember, assholes are born that way, and they usually don't change.3. You don't want to go to jail.4. When you start to take this job seriously, you're in trouble.5. It takes no more time to see the good side of life than it takes to see the bad.6. If you decide to run the ball, just count on fumbling and getting the shit knocked out of you a lot, but never forget how much fun it is just to be able to run the ball!
Jimmy Buffett
You can start by wiping that fucking dumb-ass smile off your rosey, fucking, cheeks! Then you can give me a fucking automobile... a fucking Datsun, a fucking Toyota, a fucking Mustang, a fucking Buick! Four fucking wheels and a seat! And I really don't care for the way your company left me in the middle of fucking nowhere with fucking keys to a fucking car that isn't fucking there. And I really didn't care to fucking walk down a fucking highway and across a fucking runway to get back here to...
Steve Martin
People were used to those slow human speeds on both land and sea, to those delays, those waitings on the wind or fair weather, to those expectations of shipwreck, sun, and death. The liners the little white girl knew were among the last mailboats in the world. It was while she was young that the first airlines were started, which were gradually to deprive mankind of journeys across the sea. (The Lover)
Marguerite Duras
Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life.
Jack Kerouac
Sure enough, it was just as I had dreaded, he started to climb the tree-"What the Bull?"Of course- who else?"But a bull can't climb a tree."He can't can he? Since you know so much about it, did you ever see a bull try?"No! I never dreamt of such a thing."Well, then, what is the use of your talking that way, then? Because you never saw a thing done, is that any reason why it can't be done?
Mark Twain
...There is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end...Man, it occurs to me, is a joyful, buying-and-selling piece of work. I have been wrong, dead wrong, when I've decried consumerism. Consumerism is what we are. It is, in a sense, a holy impulse. A human being is someone who joyfully goes in pursuit of things, brings them home, then immediately starts planning how to get more.
George Saunders