Quotes
I used to rotate a lot of these through my .plan files on
various accounts, but the hegemony of POP3 has rendered such things
useless. So here they are...
On fine dining
"Surliness is part of the ambience."
— My father, on Spaghetti Joe's in Utica
On women
"Women have always lightened my burdens, picked up my
spirits and exhilarated me with the old anything-goes feeling, though anything
doesn't go, of course, and never did."
— Richard Ford, The Sportswriter
On graduate school
"[Blott said,] `But I look at these guys that've been
here six, seven years, eight years, still suffering, hurt, beat up, so tired,
just like I feel tired and suffer, I feel this, what, dread, this dread, I see
seven or eight years of unhappiness every day and day after day of tiredness and
stress and suffering stretching ahead, and for what, for a chance at a like pro
career that I'm starting to get this dready feeling a career in the Show means
even more suffering, if I'm skeletally stressed from all the grueling
here by the time I get there.'"
— David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
On Elvis
"The life of Elvis adheres to all essential elements of the
template for the American iconography. He is loved by ordinary people and
therefore despised by the sneery-lipped touristas of high culture."
On thinking for dollars
"Microsoft Research is an intellectual roach
motel: All the big brains check in but nothing ever checks out."
On nobility (Part I)
"Woody Guthrie had a sign on his guitar that said
'this machine kills fascists.' That's just the kind of connection between music
and politics that I'm arguing against. It wasn't a machine and it didn't kill
fascists. It made Woody Guthrie and the people who listened to him feel noble."
— Greil Marcus,
Perfect Sound Forever interviewOn nobility (Part II)
"Tear off their helmets! (clap clap) Skate
on their faces!"
— Colgate hockey chant
On life in general
"Don't forget to stop and smell the glue"
— Future Bible Heroes, "Lonely Days"
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