Monday, January 02, 2006

The Year 2005 in Quotes:  May 2005   "One of the advantages of nothing mattering any more is that nothing matters."   -Tom Holt, In Your Dreams   "Deep-seated preferences cannot be argued about--you cannot argue a man into liking a glass of beer--and therefore, when differences are sufficiently far-reaching, we try to kill the man rather than let him have his way.  But that is perfectly consistent with admitting that, so far as appears, his grounds are just as good as ours."   -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.   "What I used to able to pass off as a bad summer could now potentially turn into a bad life."   -Chris Eigeman, Kicking and Screaming   "They said not to stop for anything, but you've gotta have your pants."   -William Benedict, Libeled Lady   Words to live by.   "The challenge of modern freedom, or the combination of isolation and freedom which confronts you, is to make yourself up.  The danger is that you may emerge from the process a not-entirely-human creature."   -Saul Bellow, Ravelstein   "The guy asks her, 'To what do you attribute the success of Hello Kitty?' and the lady replies, 'She has no mouth you see.'"   -Stacey Richter, My Date with Satan, "My Date with Satan"   "The Iliad for war; The Odyssey for wandering; but where is the great domestic epic?...Men have worshipped some fantastic being for living alone in a wilderness; but social martyrdoms place no saints upon the calendar."   -Sir Arthur Helps, "On the Art of Living with Others"   "I don't mean to be a sore loser, but when it's done, if I'm dead, kill him."   -Paul Newman, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid   "Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly."   -Desiderius Erasmus   "George W. Bush is a child molester. He likes to start wars 'cause he has open sores and they get to fester."   -Andrew Donaldson, "The President's Song"   "His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of curiosity."   -Tom Holt, In Your Dreams   "Be careful not to combine 'four dry sakes' with your 'creeping feeling of insecurity and dread', or you might find yourself saying, 'Wipe that damn grin off your face!'  The bathrooms are 'big and glamorous', so you won't mind spending an hour with your cheek pressed against the 'cool tiled floor' after she 'walks out'.  And the hip East Village location can't be beat, since her apartment is 'within walking distance', which makes it very convenient if you should choose to 'lean on her buzzer for an hour' until she calls 'the cops'."   -Noah Baumbach, "The Zagat History of My Last Relationship"   "Women are never allowed to have adventures.  When I was growing up, the only girl on TV I could identify with was Lassie.  She got to run around and do things."   -Cynthia Heimel, If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?, "Hollywood Women"   "Everybody's coming back to take stock of their lives. You know what I say? Leave your livestock alone."   -Minnie Driver, Grosse Point Blank   "I know a girl who can tie a knot in the stalk of a cherry with her tongue.  It is a tricky business, and I am doubtful whether to add it to the virtues of the cherry or not."   -A. A. Milne, "Golden Fruit"   "It was great working with Jennifer [Lopez] because, you know, she has...the press and everybody chasing after her...so that just gave me a wide berth.  I could do whatever I wanted to do, and never made the papers or anything.  It's great, you know, I could snort coke off hookers, and--nothing.  I juggled babies.  I juggled babies.  I went, look at me, I'm juggling babies...Don't make me light one on fire."   -Wanda Sykes, about life on the set of Monster-In-Law   "I drink to make other people interesting."   -George Jean Nathan   "Everyone dies in two ways:  Gradually, then all at once."   -Andrew Donaldson   "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.  We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.  We should take nothing for granted."   -President Dwight D. Eisenhower   "Other than telling us how to live, think, marry, pray, vote, invest, educate our children and, now, die, I think the Republicans have done a fine job of getting government out of our personal lives."    -Craig Carter   "I can think of a lot of things that're bliss, and ignorance doesn't even make the top one hundred."   -Tom Holt, In Your Dreams   "'What do you care about?  What makes you happy?' 'Nothing.  Nothing makes me happy.  I like nothing,' I tell her."   -Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero   "In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican."   -H. L. Mencken   "I never took an hallucinogenic because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota."   -Fran Lebowitz   "Virtue is insufficient temptation."   -George Bernard Shaw   "The sheep is in a bad position to judge.  And so, we see, the shepherd walks in front and the sheep throng behind him; and it is quite clear they would think all was lost, if they ceased to hear the shepherd, who is to them as their god…Things are thus by nature, for it is true the shepherd thinks much of the sheep and the good of the sheep; things go awry only at the slaughtering; but that is a speedy, separate matter and does not alter feelings."   -Emile Chartier, "Sheep"   "There's blood in my mouth because I've been biting my tongue all week."   -Rilo Kiley, More Adventurous, "Portions for Foxes"   "Doing stuff is overrated...like Hitler.  He did a lot.  But don't we all wish he would've just stayed home and gotten stoned?"   -Donal Logue, The Tao of Steve   "We're sisters under the mink."   -Gloria Grahame, The Big Heat   "I've been married for four years.  Four years of neglect, four years of battling, four years of heartbreak." "That makes twelve years."   -Thelma Todd and Groucho Marx, Monkey Business   "A little flirting with the female members of the cast and stage team will help to relax the nerves, but avoid anything in the nature of an orgy.  Save that for the last night party."   -Michael Green, The Art of Coarse Acting 11:42:47 PM    comment []

The Year 2005 in Quotes:  April 2005   "Because I love you I get tongue tied around you, I never say smart stuff around you, I never say anything around you that makes you wanna be with me.  So, because I love you I will never be with you."   -Dan Bern, "One Dance"   "You want a relationship?  That's fine.  Just remember that every relationship starts with a one night stand."   -Anthony Edwards, The Sure Thing   "Outside this bar, there's no one alive.  Yeah, outside this bar, how does anyone survive?  Together you and me, you know we'll never destroy this world.  Come on, baby, I wish we could destroy this world."   -American Music Club, Engine, "Outside this Bar"   "Rap music belongs in the rubbish bin.  It encourages punching, boastfulness, and rudeness to ho's."   -Marge Simpson, The Simpsons, "Pranksta Rap"   "Every so often everybody's baby gets the urge to roam but everybody's baby but mine's coming home."   -Johnny Cash, "Train of Love"   "I know that I'm full of hate and anger and frustration and I know that it's going to take all the gold and silver and diamonds in the world to cure me."   -Carroll Baker, Sylvia   When I was young, we used to dive into the swimming pool from the highest board on moonless nights, without looking to see if there was water in the pool, knowing that it was emptied twice a month.  I felt the same blind arc through darkness when I spoke to my father.  He just watched me say the word and after that either of us could go, knowing there was more to be said and time to say it.  Perhaps we wished there was not so much time."   -Thomas McGuane, Panama   "Look at you with your mouth watering, look at you with your mind spinning. Why don't we just admit it's all over? She's just the girl you want."   -Devo, "Girl U Want"   "I think I'm bipolar...'cause when I get drunk I dress up like a white Arctic bear and have sex with both men and women."   -Russ Meneve   "There is a fine line between genius and insanity.  I have erased that line."   -Oscar Levant   Oops.  I repeated this one, too.  I try not to use the same quotes over, but I can't always remember what I've used before.   "After you break up and go back enough times, you get hip to one thing:  the time of day you break up is very important.  If you run away in the middle of the night, there's no place to go.  You can't wake your friends up, and in a small town you're really screwed.  It's best to break up on your day off, in the afternoon.  You get out and you go to the movies.  Otherwise, like a schmuck, you're standing on the lawn at three o'clock in the morning with a pillowcase full of clothing and the door locked behind you."   -Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People   "Her body was so assertively adequate that one cynic had been heard to remark that she always looked as if she had nothing on underneath her dresses."   -F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Hotel Child"   "We whimper and whine at every pain.  In old strong days men faced real dangers, real troubles, every hour; they had no time to cry.  Death and disaster stood ever at the door.  Men were contemptuous of them.  Now in each snug protected villa we set to work to make wounds out of scratches."   -Jerome K. Jerome, Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, "On the Care and Management of Women"   "Though war is worse than divorce, the latter tends to undermine morale."   -Delmore Schwartz, The Ego is Always at the Wheel, "The Difficulty of Divorce"   "A merry marriage, and many happy comebacks."    -Otto Yamaoka, Libeled Lady   "The 'greatest good for the greatest number' applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which these now alive form an insignificant fraction.  Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations."   -Theodore Roosevelt   "I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes.  You'd know what a drag it is to see you."   -Bob Dylan, "Positively Fourth Street"   "Can I borrow your underpants for ten minutes?"   -Anthony Michael Hall, Sixteen Candles   "Drifting apart is part of living here."   -Carol Wolper, Mr. Famous   "I live in a little picture.  It's the only picture I have.  You say personal loyalty is one thing.  I don't think so.  I think it's everything.  It's the beginning of everything, anyway, Striker.  It's the bottom line."   -Lionel Shriver, Checker and the Derailleurs   "Someone asked him about the Nazi stuff.  Did he really show Nazi propaganda films in the White House basement?  Was he really a Hitler buff?  Gordon was prepared for this.  It wasn't the White House basement, he said.  It was the National Archives.  And it wasn't Nazi propaganda films.  It was Leni Reifenstahl, who was Hitler's mistress for a time [sic], and her film is a classic document in the annals of propaganda, a juggernaut tour of Germany, with the banners snapping, the heels clicking, Hitler waving, the crowds waving back.  The White House staffers loved it, Gordon said.  'What an advance job,' one of them had exclaimed."   -Barry Farrell, How I Got to be This Hip, “Gee, Gordon”   "It must be a drag to be a slave to the male sex drive."   -Mary Stuart Masterson, Some Kind of Wonderful   "I tried being a good girl, I tried threats, and I tried that old reliable, the silent treatment...When he knew I was really serious, when things between us had become so strained that I wouldn't even groom nits off his back anymore, he swore off the sap altogether."   -Stacey Richter, My Date With Satan, "An Island of Boyfriends"   "Voyager...is carrying photos of life on Earth, greetings in 55 languages, and a collection of music from Gregorian chants to Chuck Berry.  Including 'Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground' by Twenties bluesman Blind Willie Johnson, whose stepmother blinded him at seven by throwing lye in his eyes after his father beat her for being with another man.  He died penniless, of pneumonia, after sleeping bundled in wet newspaper in the ruins of his house, that burned down.  But his music just left the solar system."   -Bradley Whitford, The West Wing, "The Warfare of Genghis Khan"   "When I was a kid, we didn't show our affection by head butting."   -Marge Simpson, The Simpsons, "Future-Drama"   "I only married you to get even."   -Oscar Levant   "I think I love her, Luke, and I haven't even told her that I love her.  I spelled it out in chocolate-covered Oreos once, but she was really hungry, and I'm not sure she read it first."   -Sean Gunn, Gilmore Girls, "Raincoats and Recipes"   "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it's, well, broken."   -Minnie Driver, Grosse Point Blank 6:03:57 PM    comment []

The Year 2005 in Quotes:  March 2005   As I look through each day's quote from last year, I find I remember more of what I was thinking and doing at the time from the quotes than all my other posts.  They may be less useful to the rest of you.   "I'd gladly follow you to the ends of the earth to tell you just how much I don't want to see you."   -Suzanne Cryer, Two Guys And A Girl, "Two Guys, a Girl, and an Internship"   "There is a tide in the affairs of men Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune But omitted, the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat And we must take the current where it serves Or lose the ventures before us."   -William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar   “All my life I had sworn that I would not duck the first time a bullet passed over me; but the movement appears to be instinctive, and almost everyone does it at least once.”   -George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia   "It's taken me a lot of years, but I've come around to this:  If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people, and if you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you."   -Robert Guillaume, Sports Night, "The Hungry and the Hunted"   "The last time I saw him he was wearing a blue sweater and an idiotic expression.  The sweater was new."   -Angelina Jolie, Playing by Heart   "I've always been a baby, but this is how it started."   -Oscar Levant   "You really can't dust for vomit."   -Christopher Guest, This is Spinal Tap   "I want you to live with me and die with me and everything with me!"   -James Mason, Lolita   "Don't ever cry over me. There's no way I'm worth your salt. Whatever happens in the end you know it's bound to be my fault."   -Andrew Donaldson, "Wasting My Time"   "Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets."   -Arthur Miller   "Los Angeles is hell on writers.  I'm referring to unpublished, unproduced writers with no connections and maybe not the greatest sense of plot structure either.  I expect the rest do rather well."   -Sandra Tsing Loh, Depth Takes a Holiday   "I keep your sperm out of toilets."   -Tequila Mockingbird, a female performance poet   "Most people are on the world, not in it."   -John Muir   "Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago:  to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."   -Robert Kennedy, speaking after Martin Luther King was killed   "Integrity is a lofty attitude assumed by someone who is unemployed."   -Oscar Levant   "When I was a kid, my father had this dog that started to get all weak and sickly.  He takes it to the vet, he examines it and says a maggot must have laid eggs in the dog's butt.  The baby maggots have crawled up, now they've started to grow, and eventually they're gonna eat the dog alive from the inside.  He says it should be put to sleep, because it's an old dog anyway.  But father won't do it.  He takes the dog home, he puts it on the bed, he reaches up into the dog, picking out the maggots with his finger, one by one. It takes him all night, but he gets every last one. That dog outlived my father. That's love, Sam."   -Meg Ryan, Addicted to Love   "An industry or an enterprise which cannot pay its workers decent wages has no right to exist."   -Fiorello Laguardia   "Cover up--Don't tell all--are our laws too."   -John Berryman, Henry's Fate   "There is a fine line between genius and insanity.  I have erased that line."   -Oscar Levant   "Save your little epiphany.  Fuck it, let's get drunk."   -The Lisa Marr Experiment, 4 AM, "How I Got My Pretty Smile"   "Underneath this flabby exterior lies an enormous lack of character."   -Oscar Levant, An American in Paris   "Love is most full of honey and gall."   -Plautus, Cistellaria   "Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes.  That way, if he gets mad, you're a mile away and you've got his shoes."   -saying   "A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a chord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned or well read."   -H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage   "Underneath this flabby exterior lies an enormous lack of character."   -Oscar Levant, An American in Paris   "I can hate your girl.  I can tell you that she's real pretty.  I can take my clothes off.  I cannot fall in love.  You'll never see my eyes.  I will not call you back.  I cannot do the Smurf.  I cannot fall in love.  I'll never fall in love.  I cannot fall in love.  I cannot fall in love.  I cannot fall in love.  I cannot fall in love."   -Rilo Kiley, "The Frug"   After I posted this quote, I went on to say, "If Rilo Kiley were a cult, you’d shave your head and dance at airports."  I stand by that.   "I want you to trust me right now. I want you to say to yourself, yeah, I've dated a string of jerks in my life, they were stupid, they were mean to me, but maybe this one's different.  Maybe I should take a chance and not adopt the break-up-with-him-before-he-breaks-my-heart strategy.  I want you to remember that when I started liking you, I didn't stop liking tennis.  And I want you to know that I don't think there's a woman in the world that you need to be threatened by, no matter how glamorous you think she is.  But mostly, I want you to trust me, just once, when I tell you, you have three sevens, and I have a straight."   -Joshua Malina, Sports Night, "Shoe Money Tonight"   "I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving. England is mine. It owes me a living."   -The Smiths, "Still Ill"   "We're lying.  We've lied to you.  We lie to make our point of view.  We're lying.  We lie to say we plan to lie our lives away."   -Stellastarr*, Stellastarr*, "Pulp Song"   "My parents told me that love don't exist just for pleasure, so I guess I throw in some pain for good measure."   -The Only Ones, The Only Ones, "Language Problem"   "Introduce her to your world of sex, drugs and...what else do you do?"   -Sarah Michelle Gellar, Cruel Intentions 2:17:57 PM    comment []

Quote for the Day, 1/2/2006   "The land was ours before we were the land's."   -Robert Frost, "The Gift Outright" 1:32:15 PM    comment []

Romney for President?   Many are trying to hype the candidacy of Mitt Romney for President.  He is, it's true, a Republican who was elected governor in the bluest of blue states, just as his two predecessors were.  But 85% of the Massachusetts legislature is Democratic; and Democrats in Massachusetts need look no farther than Washington, DC to see that undivided government is a really bad idea.  But Romney is not running for re-election as governor.  That's because at every stop on his undeclared campaign for President, he insults Massachusetts over and over again.  Those are his laugh lines.  He could no more win re-election than a fox be elected sheriff by the chickens.  As near as I can tell, he hates Massachusetts.  He thinks it's funny that they elected him.  The idea behind his candidacy is he might lure blue state voters into voting for him...by demonstrating that he is filled with loathing and contempt for them, I guess. I endorse Mitt Romney's candidacy for Republican nominee for President.  Please, run that shmuck, I beg you.  The guy has all the charm of a hallway monitor. 12:00:42 PM    comment []

The Year 2005 in Quotes:  February 2005   "Courage, now there's a sport: An invitation to the state of rigor mort; and purity, a noble yen, and very restful every now and then. I find humility means to be hurt; it's not the earth the meek inherit, it's the dirt."   -Alan Jay Lerner, "The Seven Deadly Virtues"   "We've got to take these bastards.  Now, we could do it with conventional weapons, but that could take years, and cost millions of lives.  No, I think we have to go all out.  I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part."   -Tim Matheson, Animal House   "When a chimpanzee looks at another chimpanzee he does not see what we see.  They frequently have twins."   -Will Cuppy   "Every word you say to me is full of rejection letters."   -Andrew Donaldson, "Hang Ups"   "When I'm drinking beer, I'm thinking, ah, life is beer."   -Fred Astaire, The Band Wagon   “Ladies, the fault lies with you.  Every right-thinking man is an universal lover; how could it be otherwise?  You are so diverse, yet each so charming of your kind; and a man's heart is large.  You have no idea, fair Reader, how large a man's heart is:  That is his trouble--sometimes yours."   -Jerome K. Jerome, Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow   "Is there a way to win?" "There's a way to lose more slowly."   -Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum, Out of the Past (1947)   "The most expensive thing on this earth is to believe in something that is palpably not true."   -H. L. Mencken, The Minority Report   I quoted this twice.  On the other hand, it bears repeating.   “You took a chance, you should feel great about that...He thinks you do your job, and what will be, will be.  I think that what I do and what you do matters.  He sleeps better at night.  He shouldn't.”   -Hugh Laurie, House, "DNR"   "the high cost of living isn t so bad if you don t have to pay for it"   -Don Marquis, archy and mehitabel   "You see, that's one of the great things about getting involved with someone from another country.  You can't take it personally.  What's really terrific is that when we act in ways which might objectively seem asshole-ish or, or, incredibly annoying, they don't get upset at all.  They don't take it personally.  They just assume it’s some national characteristic."   -Taylor Nichols, Barcelona   "You know, I never knew what happiness was until I married your mother.  And by then it was too late."   -Sean Connery, Playing By Heart   "She'll only break your heart, it's a fact. And even though I warn you, even though I guarantee you that the girl will only hurt you terribly, you'll still pursue her. Ain't love grand?"   -Anne Bancroft, Great Expectations (1998)   "It didn't really affect me, except for the rest of my life."   -Oscar Levant   "Existentialism means no one else can take a bath for you."   -Delmore Schwartz, The Ego is Always at the Wheel   "Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was, or what freedom really is."   -Margaret Mitchell   "All you need to start an asylum is a large room, and the right kind of people."   -Eugene Pallette, My Man Godfrey   "Winners forget they're in a race.  They just love to run."   -Joe Pesci, With Honors   "I feel the pain of everyone.  Then I feel nothing."   -Dinosaur Jr., "Feel the Pain"   "All progress is based upon the universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income."   -Samuel Butler   "Why did I ever have kids?  I could have written symphonies, or been Shakespeare."   -Homer Simpson, The Simpsons, "Mommie Beerest"   "A rolling stone gathers no remorse."   -Delmore Schwartz   "I wish I had a sense of humor, but I never can think of the right thing to say until everybody's gone home."   -Carole Lombard, My Man Godfrey   "A hermit is simply a person to whom civilization has failed to adjust itself."   -Will Cuppy   "Gift giving is serious business.  If you don't believe me, try a month of Korean Bible camp."   -Keiko Agena, Gilmore Girls, "Forgiveness and Stuff"   "My considered diagnosis is that you have the worst ailment known to man--no money!"   -Woodrow Parfrey, Bronco Billy   "Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil."   -Frederick Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil 1:54:39 AM    comment []