Quotes Collected in my Computer
Submitted by cmonster on Fri, 09/01/2006 - 03:30
Tags:
- "The sort of place where you don't have to tie a rope to get to the barn more than a couple of times a winter... but people understand what you mean when you say, "I had to tie a rope to get to the barn." --Elizabeth Bear on her ideal climate
- "For me, one of the most fantastical and fascinating things about Norse myth is the way it all works as allegory. This guy is Fire, and this guy is Wind, and this other guy is Frost, and this woman is Sea, and this woman is a Bloody Wave-Crest, and this guy over here is an Asshole....Literally. It's all about holding an uncollapsed wave form in your head. The cat is alive and dead; Fenrir is chained and he is howling the end of the world; Loki is Odin's blood-brother and he is his greatest enemy. And the fact that all this stuff contradicts itself is just part of the magic. Considering how very little of the literature survives, we have no idea at all what we've lost. This is not a tidy linear little mythosphere. It's a brawling mess of intentional contradictions and hard-drinking heros who may very well be villains the next time you meet them. And oh, I love it so." -- Elizabeth Bear
- "War wizards rarely eat meat. Their abstinence is a balance for the killing they sometimes must do."-- Terry Goodkind, Stone of Tears
- "People hate it when you kick them in the binaries." --Elizabeth Bear
- "I didn't say anything. I was fathoms deep in my own sea." -- Jonathan Lethem, "As She Climbed Across the Table"
- "And sadly, things are not likely to improve, because I'm working on a Big Thing at the office, plus I have about ninety things going on outside the office, and the end result is that I am sleepy and confused. My brain has crawled somewhere deep into the recesses of my skull, and this means that my body is operating only on stray cells and air. No one is driving this bus." --missdoxie.com
- "I see it. I saw it so clearly yesterday. It was always a hundred words ahead of me, just like most other things." --Caitlin Kiernan
- "Spooky's out walking the cat. That sounds as though it ought to be a euphemism, but it's not." – ibid
- “I have this odd habit or ritual I've developed. See, we buy Red Rose tea bags, for ice tea, and in every box you get a little ceramic animal. I think we had some thought of collecting the whole lot, but we've ended up with piles of sheep and rhinos and chickens and not a single zebra. You know how it goes. Anyway, sometimes on our walks, I'll leave one of these little ceramic animals someplace, more or less in plain sight, just to see how long it takes someone to move it. There's a chicken that's been in the same spot for the better part of a year now. An elephant lasted over a year. Yesterday I left a ram on the corner of a house, and a rhino in the crook of a tree, and I left one of the chickens somewhere, but cannot now recall where.” – ibid, 03/25/06
- "We don't tan, but we don't burn, either."
- --Chiana, "Natural Election"
- "'Cause you never can tell / What goes on down below! / This pool might be bigger / Than you or I know!" --Dr. Seuss, McElligot's Pool
- “She snorted with a sudden violence which twenty-four hours earlier would have unmanned me completely. Even in my present tolerably robust condition, it affected me like one of those gas explosions which slay six.” –PG Wodehouse
- Despite being an avowed Protestant, Henri had married Catholic-bred Marguerite De Valois on August 18, 1572, in an attempt to create an expmple of religious harmony for his people. But the plan failed (in rather spectacular fashion) when his bride's family had most of the king's Protestant wedding guests killed. The event touched off the St. Barthlomew's Day Massacre (which would eventually leave 70,000 people dead throughout France) and probably strained the relationship between Henri and his queen.
- --Eleanor Herman, “Romancing the Throne”
- “Countess Judith kept her husband’s head in a box. At night it perched on the pillow by her side, at meals it sat on the board by her plate, and her household feared it almost as much as they feared her. She talked to it, they whispered among themselves, and who was to say it didn’t answer?” –Sylvian Hamilton, “The Gleemaiden”
- “First degree murder is punishable by death in Missouri, even if the victim is an editor of romance novels.” –Michael Bowen, “Unforced Error”
- We are accustomed to repeating the cliche, and to believing, that “our most precious resource is our children.” But we have plenty of children to go around, God knows, and as with Doritos, we can always make more. –Michael Chabon
- “At twenty, if you are a callow young man—and I think the man of twenty pretty much defines the term—then your callowness consists almost entirely in this variety of belief, that life consists of mastering the particulars, memorizing the lineups, accumulating the trivia and lore, in knowing how to trace the career of drummer Aynsley Dunbar or get a girl to go to bed with you and your best friend, as an expression of your existential freedom and complete disregard for the fact that she is a person, and she likes you, or him, and you’re actually kind of breaking her heart.” --Ibid
- "The bartender at Freeman’s makes a cocktail as if it were a kind of voodoo. Behold the creation of the mint julep: Crush mint with mortar and pestle; crush ice with violent whaling that resembles something out of the last 30 minutes of Apocalypse Now; pour liquor with precision of a scientist; twist the swizzle stick as if to make fire; as a finale, crumble mint leaf between your fingers and smack your hands to dust it over the drink. Honestly, I’m not sure if I have a cocktail or if I’ve just been baptized." --Sarah Hepola, "One Day in New York City"
- "If I ever saw [Rachael Ray] getting trashed on Old Crow, pistol-whipping a vegan after a bar crawl, I would think, "That's an interesting woman. I would like to know her." --Anthony Bourdain
- "I walked into the kitchen, unchanged since Ronald Reagan ruled Earth. My brother, Greg, and I once found a pile of cleaning products that predated bar-coding on a hallway shelf. 'No sandwich, thanks, Mom. Am I, or am I not, here about a dead biker?'"--Douglas Coupland, JPod
- "'I may have grown up in a lesbian commune, but I think we truly are overdependent on climate control systems in our society.'" -- Ibid
- "Likewise, I'd argue that boring people aren't boring--they're hampered by microautism, the clinical term being 'lack of social or emotional reciprocity'. In a clever twist of fate, when Steve started working at my company, he spoke almost entirely in cutesy cloying management jargon peppered with self-help poop. However, for complex reasons, Steve ended up as a heroin addict. In becoming an addict, Steve acquired both a sense of humour and irony." --Ibid
- "Inside the house John called out for freedom, but there was a nobody-home feeling. The place smelled of eroding fabrics and vegetarian cooking. The coloured crystals and knick-knacks everywhere highlighted my sense that here, people could stop taking their prescription medications without fear of being judged." --Ibid
- "A lemon yellow Supra with all sorts of silly spoiler attachments sped past us. Greg went nuts: "I'll kill you, you little fuckhead!"
Now's not a good time to ask about Lot 49.
When we arrived at Whistler, my toes were still so clenched inside my shoes that I had to bang them on the back seat floor to loosen them." --Ibid - "All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional." -- TP, Guards! Guards!
- "All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the knee." -- TP, Guards! Guards!
- "You need not be a genius. You will need an IQ higher than the president of the United States (I know, easy) but low enough that you still don't quite understand how quantum physics might affect your gas mileage, orgasms or the price of a good mocha." --Mark Morford, "Please Try My Dating Service"
- "Panic tastes kind of like cough syrup, vodka, lemon Pledge, and cold air. It's a uniquely upsetting flavor." --Briana Newton, "Wrigley's Lemon Burst Eclipse Chewing Gum"
- "The harsh gift of free-market commerce has meant that cinnamon-flavored Tic Tacs, for which I would enter into armed combat, do not make their way to my native Australia. Lime Mints are merely a dream that fevers the wistful and torments the insane." --Christian McRea, "Passionfruit Mint Tic-Tacs"
- "Zatarain's Ready-To-Serve Red Beans & Rice reminds me of the day when I, in my infinite laziness, had prepared Zatarain's regular ol' red beans and rice, which is a painstaking 20-minute ordeal of boiling water and pouring ingredients into a pot. I ate a few tasty spoonfuls, and then ended up leaving the rest cooling on the stove for three days because I received an emergency call to bail my stoner friend out of prison in Topeka." --Justin Theriault
- "After one bite, I understood the undergrad's grave warning. Never eat pizza from a machine. It's like making love to a Terminator: almost satisfying, but slightly creepy, and there's always the possibility that it will collapse your chest cavity with one fatal blow. " --Robert Moor, ""Hot Choice" Tombstone Deep Dish Pepperoni Pizza"
- "There was an article in today's Sunday Star Times Sunday magazine that was interesting and not completely misogynist. I almost died of shock (for non-New Zealanders Sunday's speciality is that it no longer calls it's 'beauty' section 'beauty' or even 'health', but maintenance. I've no idea what you're supposed to be maintaining with blue eye-shadow)." --Maia, "Working Mothers" guest post on Alas, A Blog
Cloned From:
"War wizards rarely eat meat. Their abstinence is a balance for the killing they sometimes must do."-- Terry Goodkind, Stone of Tears
Yeah, this one's always reminded me of you...
Awesome.