3701) "'You see,' Franny would explain, years later, 'we aren't eccentric, we're not bizarre. To each other,' Franny would say, 'we're as common as rain.' And she was right: to each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread, we were just a family. In a family, even exaggerations make perfect sense; they are always logical exaggerations, nothing more."-John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
3702) "Every misunderstanding has at its center a breakdown of language."-John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
3703) "But, you see, if I were a communist, who would I want for the government in power? The most liberal? No. I would desire the most repressive, the most capitalistic, and most anti-communist government possible—for then I would thrive. Where would the Left be without the help of the Right? The most stupid and right-wing everything is, the better for the Left."-John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
3704) "If we want to live in a free country, we have to accept that people are different. You are not free if you are only free to be like everyone else."- Larry Goodwin
3705) "Listen children to a story that was written long ago/ 'bout a kingdom on a mountain and the valley folk below./ On the mountain was a treasure buried deep beneath a stone,/ and the valley people swore they'd have it for their very own./ Go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend./ Do it in the name of heaven, justify it in the end./ There won't be any trumpets blowin', come the judgment day,/ on the bloody morning after one tin soldier rides away./ So the people of the valley sent a message up the hill/ asking for the buried treasure, tons of gold for which they'd kill./ Came an answer from the kingdom: 'With our brothers we will share/ all the secrets of our mountain, all the riches buried there.'/ Now the valley cried with anger; mount your horses, draw your sword,/ and they killed the mountain people, so they won their just reward./ Now they stood beside the treasure on the mountain, dark and red,/ turned the stone and looked beneath it. 'Peace on earth' was all it said."- Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, "One Tin Soldier (The Legend of Billy Jack)"
3706) "I think laughter may be a form of courage. As humans we sometimes stand tall and look into the sun and laugh, and I think we are never more brave than when we do that."-Linda Ellerbee
3707) "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the things you think you cannot do."-Eleanor Roosevelt
3708) "Before Sept. 11, New York was a tough, fragile place. This sounds like a paradox, but one that New Yorkers will understand. If you live with eight million people and another three million commuters and tourists, you understand how tissue-thin is the cement of civility."-Frank McCourt
3709) "The subway. That was the best way to know New York. Don't be afraid, folks. Step right in. The trains are safe now. Bring the kids. Let them peer through the window in the front car with the train roaming through the tunnels and over bridges. The kids will be excited, and New Yorkers will smile a little. Not too much. Be careful with that smile. The person opposite might misunderstand. You stash the smile and attend to your eyes. Study the ads the length of the car. Now watch the people. You'll know the New Yorkers. They're cool. They know the moves. Depending on the time of day, there's a way of getting on and off. Tourists fumble. New Yorkers belly up to the door and, if its conductor is slow, they shrug. New Yorkers boarding a train see an empty seat and streak like missiles. They hide behind newspapers. Unless there's a pregnant woman, or a woman (or even a man) holding a child. Then they give up their seats, insisting, 'Here, here.' And everyone in the car smiles a New York smile. Not too much. Just enough. And the outsider wonders: Where is the uncouthness they warned of back home in Indiana?"-Frank McCourt
3710) "New Yorkers, however, insist on being New Yorkers: Even during unprecedented catastrophes, they take things in stride in a way that one can't imagine anywhere else."-Daphne Merkin
3711) "He has more baggage than JFK Airport!"-Jen Tosti
3712) "She's a marriage of extremes. She's a geometric maze./ With nights too loud for dreams and 27 hour days./ And, often when it seems that she's just stumbling in a daze/ Still, she just won't slow down./ Some say she's uninviting, uncaring and uncouth./ Some say that she's cold and long forsaken by her youth./ But, all these lies about her can't be further from the truth./ They don't know my town./ I feel the heart that's beating in New York City/ With the warmth of the people that I've found./ They're the kind who love to live/ And, have so much love to give/ But, are strong enough to turn this world around./ And when I need to know the meaning of romance/ And I give 'em half a chance,/ They never let me down./ See, it's the people that you meet/ That are the breath and the heartbeat/ Of this great old town./ There's nothing like the sparkle of her skyline after dark./ Dreamers and adventurers come here to make their mark./ And yet, in a New York minute you can be in Central Park./ Where the world stands still./ Now, I've done a little of traveling, from Key Biscayne to Nome./ And there's something about each place to love no matter where I roam./ But I can't wait to get back to her. I call New York my home,/ And I always will./ 'Cause I hear the love song you're singing in New York City/ It's a symphony that sounds like rock 'n roll./ And in the subways and the streets/ There's a rhythm that beats/ Until it heats up every heart and every soul./ 8 million different voices joining in here./ While those who've never been here/ Blindly put her down./ But, I don't care what they think of her/ 'Cause I live here and I love her/ And she's my home town."-David Ippolito, "City Song (The Heart of New York City)"
3713) "Beauty, truth, friendship, love, creation – these are the great values of life. We can’t prove them, or explain them, yet they are the most stable things in our lives."-Jesse Herman Holmes
3714) "Flannery did not know New York except as a movie and a myth. And as a mysterious, emphatic address on nighttime TV ads, when you were asked to send your checks and order to New York, New York, the repetition reminding you that you were nowhere, obviously, and everyone who was anyone was in New York. New York. As if you were too stupid to have gotten it the first time."-Sylvia Brownrigg, Pages For You
3715) "At least half of life's humiliations and indignities…turned out to be recyclable later into routines that made you good company. In fact, perhaps the entire endeavor was to lurch from one misadventure to another, collecting the raw material for stories…"-Sylvia Brownrigg, Pages For You
3716) "…she accepted this as another encounter with one of the world's fundamentals: that life patterns zigzag in randomness, when opportunities catch spark and personalities chance to connect. Often as not, a person's efforts to take the rationally chosen path are thwarted. An obvious New Yorker cannot find employment in New York and is removed to a different imaginative territory altogether, which offers other possibilities. On a Monday someone might read your job application, or request for clemency, or novel in verse—and the light would be right and the spirit optimistic, and you’d learn in a week that you were to be hired, or forgiven, or published. Yes, you! On a Tuesday the coffee would not taste as good, the weather was ominous, and the doors would close, gently but firmly: Thank you for applying, but…We have considered your request, and regret that…A number of us very much enjoyed your work; however, in the end I'm afraid…One geography vanishes, and with it an alternative future."-Sylvia Brownrigg, Pages For You
3717) "Why do we play with fire?/ Why do we run our finger through the flame?/ Why do we leave our hand on the stove—/ Although we're in for some pain?/ Oh, why do we refuse to hang a light/ When the streets are dangerous?/ Why does it take an accident/ Before the truth gets through to us?/ Cages or wings?/ Which do you prefer?/ Ask the birds./ Fear or love, baby?/ Don't say the answer/ Actions speak louder than words./ Why should we try to be our best/ When we can just get by and still gain?/ Why do we nod our heads/ Although we know/ The boss is wrong as rain?/ Why should we blaze a trail/ When the well worn path seems safe and/ So inviting?/ How—as we travel can we see the dismay—/ And keep from fighting?/ What does it take/ To wake up a generation?/ How can you make someone/ Take off and fly?/ If we don't wake up/ And shake up the nation/ We'll eat the dust of the world,/ Wondering why/ Why do we stay with lovers/ Who we know, down deep/ Just aren't right?/ Why would we rather/ Put ourselves through hell/ Than sleep alone at night?/ Why do we follow leaders who never lead?/ Why does it take catastrophe to start a revolution?/ If we're so free, tell me why?/ Someone tell me why/ So many people bleed?"-Jonathan Larson, "Louder Than Words"
3718) "I can't connect with mountains, trees, the little animals—they snub me. You know how you can be with two other people and you're all having a great time. Then the person sitting next to you says something in French and the two of them burst into laughter, best laugh anyone's had all night. And you're left out because you took Spanish in the seventh grade, not French. That's what nature does to me. Speaks French to the other people at the table."-Diana Son, Stop Kiss
3719) "Callie: Standing up there talking about my idiotic job [a traffic reporter for a 24-hour news radio station]. Sara: You ride in a helicopter, Callie, what could be cooler than that? Callie: Have you noticed? The only thing you ever praise about my job is that I ride in a helicopter? But that doesn't even matter. Standing up in front of those kids today telling them about what I do I thought—why should these kids care about traffic, their families don't have cars. I don't have a car. No one I care about has a car. Who am I helping? Sara: People with cars. Callie: Who are they? Why do they live in New York City? Why have a car when you hear every 10 minutes on the radio that the traffic is so bad?"-Diana Son, Stop Kiss
3720) "this is my song/ oh god of all the nations/ a song of peace/ for lands afar and mine/ this is my home/ the country where my heart is/ here are my hopes/ my dreams my holy shrine/ but other hearts/ in other lands are beating/ with hopes and dreams/ as true and high as mine/ my country's skies/ are bluer than the ocean/ and sunlight beams/ on clover leaf and pine/ but other lands/ have sunlight too and clover/ and skies are everywhere/ as blue as mine/ oh hear my song/ oh god of all the nations/ a song of peace/ for their land and for mine"-Sibelius
3721) "When you have an hour lunch conversation, you have to stay focused. It's not like when you're working in an office with someone and can carry out the conversation in dribs and drabs throughout the day; or on e-mail, when you have hours between messages to think about your response. A face-to-face hour is very different: it forces you to be efficient, parceling out your news in succinct two-minute presentations."-Sylvia Brownrigg, The Metaphysical Touch
3722) "She began to cry. Just crying—the deep and ugly kind, the kind you lose yourself in, thanking God no one has to see how rubbed and blotched your face becomes, though some detached part of you also wishes there were someone to see you now, to see and understand how sad you are, at heart. They don't see it, of course; you'd never show them."-Sylvia Brownrigg, The Metaphysical Touch
3723) "A random thought. Don't you kind of love 'Re'? And how e-mail gives you Re? It's so handy. It helps focus you on the issue at hand. Plus it gives you the discipline of titling your thoughts. It's a shame we can't use it in our day-to-day interactions, you know? I feel it would cut down on unnecessary blather. You could just call someone up and say: 'Hi, Bob. So, listen, re: the movie. Let's go to the 9 o'clock show. Re: the baseball game. The Orioles lost.' Or you know, 'Hi, Marcia. Re: our relationship. It's over. Don't call me again.' Or whatever. Wouldn't that be kind of cool? Or not?"-Sylvia Brownrigg, The Metaphysical Touch
3724) "Everyone has to find a reason for living. You know that old chestnut, 'Why are we here?' I think the millennial person's response to this question, if he or she has been to college, survived adolescence and the dysfunctional families or drug-riddled streets of home—is to answer paradoxically: 'To find a reason for being.' I don't care what it is for you. A job, a cause, a dog, a book, or a kid. Something to keep you putting one foot in front of the other"-Sylvia Brownrigg, The Metaphysical Touch
3725) "Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself."-Antoine De Saint-Exupery
3726) "The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live."-Victor Hugo
3727) "Places all have their own characters, and returning to a city where you have lived before is like coming home to an old friend. But the people begin to look the same; the same faces recurring in cities a thousand miles apart, the same expressions. The flat, hostile stare of the official. The curious look of the peasant. The dull unsurprised faces of the tourists. The same lovers, mothers, beggars, cripples, vendors, joggers, children, policemen, taxi drivers, pimps."-Joanne Harris, Chocolat
3728) "I'm too tall to be a girl, I never had enough dresses to be a lady, and I wouldn't call myself a woman. I'm somewhere between a chick and a broad."-Julia Roberts
3729) "What I've seen is this. Every day people groan their way into their jobs here, which exist so that there will be fewer of them out on the street at any one time and so less likelihood of riots or mayhem. They exercise in little, padded, windowless gymnasiums, where they pretend briefly to a life in the country—running, skiing, swimming, or cycling their way into infinite space, because the idea of really getting anywhere while exercising is anathema. Preposterous—it would be like, the analogy goes, actually walking out of your house and killing a person or violating a person's internal life, instead of doing the sensible thing, which is to sit in a dark room with other people watching someone on screen do it instead. Hundreds of thousands of people, I'm told, this way avoid spending their lives in prison because of a crime they might have committed, and are allowed to spend their lives jogging between a dim theater and the brightly lit sanitation of their homes, getting their violence in the one not the other. In this way they remain free. Free, in turn to punch punching bags at the gymnasium."-Sylvia Brownrigg, "Broad From Abroad" from Ten Women Who Shook the World
3730) "'What did you do today?' the figure might ask me. 'Pledge allegiance to the flag. The usual stuff.' 'Which flag is that?' 'Our flag, silly!' The figure had a tendency to be uninformed when it came to the basics. 'Redwhitenblue.' 'Why does this flag want your allegiance? What's it planning to do?' 'Nothing. It's not the flag that wants it, it's our teacher.' 'I thought you said it was the flag.' 'We say it to the flag.' 'Well, what does the flag say back?' 'Nothing!' 'Nothing at all?' 'Of course not!' 'How arrogant. And how rude. While all of you stand up and pledge your allegiance to it! And what does the teacher say?' 'Thank you.' 'I should think so, too. Still, I don't like it.' 'What?' 'The whole business,' the figure would say, then change the subject."-Sylvia Brownrigg, "She Who Caught Buses" from Ten Women Who Shook the World
3731) "We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens.…The diversity of the phenomena of Nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment."-Johannes Kepler
3732) "I'm a hopeless romantic trapped in a cynic's body."-Ariel Bierbaum
3733) "It strikes Miranda as bizarre how you could sit for months plotting how to get inside, and then one day you knock, he says come in, and you wonder if it would have truly been that easy all along."-Thisbe Nissen, The Good People of New York
3734) "Miranda knows at this point that even getting Ben will never sate her desire for him—it's moved so far beyond the issue of fulfilling a want. Whether or not she will get him—somehow, in some way—becomes a moot point itself; she will have him, unquestionably. It's what she will do then that eludes her. Once she has Ben, and Ben himself is not enough to quench the thirst he has aroused in her, then what will she do?"-Thisbe Nissen, The Good People of New York
3735) "She supposes that's just the way things go: you never get to the place you once looked up to because once you're there you're no longer looking up and you realize that maybe it only really existed if you caught it on an angle from below. But then she supposes also that she has become her own version of that elusive, daunting maturity."-Thisbe Nissen, The Good People of New York
3736) "Guidance counselors are always trying not to sound like guidance counselors, which is precisely what characterizes their speech so distinctly."-Thisbe Nissen, The Good People of New York
3737) "It is getting easier to talk as she goes on, as the story of the situation takes over and eclipses the situation itself. It makes a better story than it does a relationship, and Miranda will wonder later if that is something she was aware of all along, or if maybe that's just the way most things are: you do the things you do because you like telling yourself about doing them. It keeps you interested in the story of your own life, wondering what might happen next."-Thisbe Nissen, The Good People of New York
3738) "Maybe that's what you learn in college, she thinks: how to make peace when you don't actually have to but you might as well."-Thisbe Nissen, The Good People of New York
3739) "I'm here [New York City] because I was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else, but I don't know about you….We can never make proper goodbyes. It was your last ride in a Checker cab, and you had no warning. It was the last time you were going to have Lake Tung Ting shrimp in that entirely suspect Chinese restaurant, and you had no idea. If you had known, perhaps you would have stepped behind the counter and shaken everyone's hand, pulled out the disposable camera and used posing instructions. But you had no idea. There are unheralded tipping points, a certain number of times that we will unlock the front door of an apartment. At some point you were closer to the last time than you were to the first time, and you didn't even know it. You didn't know that each time you passed the threshold you were saying goodbye. I never got a chance to say goodbye to the twin towers. And they never got a chance to say goodbye to me. I think they would have liked to; I refuse to believe in their indifference. You say you know these streets pretty well? The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone. It saw you steeling yourself for the job interview, slowly walking home after the late date, tripping over nonexistent impediments on the sidewalk. It saw you wince when the single frigid drop fell from the air-conditioner 12 stories up and zapped you. It saw the bewilderment on your face as you stepped out of the stolen matinee, incredulous that there was still daylight after such a long movie. It saw you half-running up the street after you got the keys to your first apartment. It saw all that. Remembers too. Consider what all your old apartments would say if they got together to swap stories. They would piece together the starts and finishes of your relationships, complain about your wardrobe and musical tastes, gossip about who you are after midnight. 7J says, 'So that's what happened to Lucy; I knew it would never work out.' You picked up yoga, you put down yoga, you tried various cures. You tried on selves and got rid of them, and this makes your old rooms wistful: why must things change? 3R says: 'Saxophone, you say? I knew him when he played guitar.' Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the caretakers of your reinventions….Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us. To put off the inevitable, we try to fix the city in place, remember it as it was, doing to the city what we would never allow to be done to ourselves. The kid on the uptown No. 1 train, the new arrival stepping out of Grand Central, the jerk at the intersection who doesn't know east from west: those people don't exist anymore, ceased to be a couple of apartments ago, and we wouldn't have it any other way. New York City does not hold our former selves against us. Perhaps we can extend the same courtesy. The twin towers still stand because we saw them, moved in and out of their long shadows, were lucky enough to know them for a time. They are a part of the city we carry around. It is hard to imagine that something will take their place, but at this very moment the people with the right credentials are considering how to fill the crater. The cement trucks will roll up and spin their bellies, the jackhammers will rattle, and after a while the postcards of the new skyline will be available for purchase. Naturally we will cast a wary eye toward those new kids on the block, but let's be patient and not judge too quickly. We were new here, too, once."-Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Magazine
3740) "Don't be afraid to go after what you want to do, and what you want to be. But don't be afraid to be willing to pay the price."-Lane Frost
3741) "The pain of grief is the price we pay for love."
3742) "We ride and never worry about the fall, I guess that’s just the cowboy in us all"-Tim McGraw, "The Cowboy In Me"
3743) "We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses."-C.G.Jung
3744) "Change before you have to."-Jack Welch
3745) "Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken."-Frank Herbert
3746) "The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."-Flannery O'Connor
3747) "Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change."-Confucius
3748) "I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination."-Jimmy Dean
3749) "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."-J.R.R Tolkien, Gandalf the Grey
3750) "If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it as the old woman did her lost spectacles - on her own nose all the time."-Josh Billings
3751) Sail on silver girl, sail on by./ Your time has come to shine. All your dreams are on their way./ See how they shine, Oh, if you need a friend I'm sailing right behind./ Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind./ Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind."-Paul Simon
3752) "Marriage changes passion...suddenly you're in bed with a relative."
3753) "Money can't buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with."
3754) "I don't approve of political jokes...I've seen too many of them get elected."
3755) "If life deals you lemons, make lemonade; if it deals you tomatoes, make Bloody Marys. But if it deals you a truckload of hand grenades...now THAT'S a message!!"
3756) "The next time you feel like complaining remember: Your garbage disposal probably eats better than thirty percent of the people in this world."
3757) "You know what gives me the courage to keep on living? The courage to love myself a little? It's having a whole bunch of friends who really give a goddamn. When you share pain, there's less of it, and when you share joy, there's more of it. That's a basic fact of the universe, and I've learned it here."-Spider Robinson, "Fivesight"
3758) "It's the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding with envy because they didn't have the good fortune to be born homo sapiens."-Orson Scott Card, Speaker For the Dead
3759) "Parents always make their worst mistakes with the oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right."-Orson Scott Card, Xenocide
3760) "Happiness can depend as easily on useless things as on useful ones."-Orson Scott Card, Xenocide
3761) "'It may be a cliche,' said Jane, 'but that doesn't mean it can't also be true.'"-Orson Scott Card, Xenocide
3762) "Some minds are like concrete. Thoroughly mixed and permanently set."-Scott Adams, God's Debris
3763) "Mothers are not for leaning on but to make leaning unnecessary."
3764) "Sometimes our dreams pervert reality, makes us think things are there that are not, makes us think we have things we do not. Then when we can differentiate between the two, the realization just causes pain."-Scott Taylor
3765) "There are moments which mark your life. Moments when you realize nothing will ever be the same, and time is divided into two parts: before this and after this. Sometimes you can feel such a moment coming. That's the test. At times like that, strong people keep moving forward anyway, no matter what they're going to find."
3766) "But who knows what's waiting in the wings of time, dry your eyes we gotta go where we can shine...For all that we struggle, for all we pretend you know it don't come down to nothing except love in the end. And ours is a road that is strewn with goodbyes but as it unfolds, as it all unwinds remember your soul is the one thing you can't compromise. Step out of the shadow, we're gonna go where we can shine."-David Gray
3767) "Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well-considered, and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child's spirit."-Erik Erikson
3768) "I imagine that the reason that people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they are afraid that if they let go of the hate, they will have to deal with pain."-James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
3769) "To be nobody but yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."-E.E. Cummings
3770) "As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos."-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "The Most Durable Power", a sermon delivered on November 6,1956 in Montgomery, Alabama
3771) "The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart it buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within, not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear."-Stephen King
3772) "Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children."-Pablo Casals
3773) "Glen Rock baffles me. It seems like everything happens there, but nothing happens there."-Adrian Majid
3774) "If Mr. Right knocked on my door, I would tell him that he could visit but only once or twice a week at most."-Rachel Jimenez
3775) "Along with the desire to spend comes a desire to control what is coming back at them from the mirror. Noses are bobbed into a shape that nature never knew, hair is whipped up with air and colored into a metallic tinted meringue, and faces are pulled into death masks. The variety of alteration is vast, except when it comes to breasts. Breasts are made large only—and in the process misshapen—and the incongruity of two bowling balls on an ironing board never seems to bother anyone. In Beverly Hills, young men, searching for young women who remind them of their face-lifted mothers, are stranded and forlorn in a sea of natural-looking twenty-five-year-olds."-Steve Martin, Shopgirl
3776) "And as powerful as their desire for each other remains, their conflicting goals stalemate them, and their relationship has failed to move forward, even the incremental amount necessary for it to stay alive."-Steve Martin, Shopgirl
3777) "She tried to get even with him through psychological warfare but couldn't, because he didn't care."-Steve Martin, Shopgirl
3778) "The failure to measure up hits people very hard. From such a strong desire to be good they feel very far from goodness when they fail."-Tony Kushner, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches
3779) "Inferiority is not banal or incidental even when it happens to women. It is not a petty affliction like bad skin or circles under the eyes. It is not a superficial flaw in an otherwise perfect picture. It is not a minor irritation, nor is it a trivial inconvenience, an occasional aggravation, or a regrettable but (frankly) harmless lapse in manners. It is not a 'point of view' that some people with soft skins find 'offensive'. It is the deep and destructive devaluing of a person in life, a shredding of dignity and self-respect, and imposed exile from human worth and human recognition, the forced alienation of a person from even a possibility of wholeness or internal integrity. Inferiority puts the rightful self-love beyond reach, a dread fragmented by insult into a perpetually reoccurring nightmare; inferiority creates a person broken and humiliated inside."-Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse
3780) "I was in Vegas this weekend with some friends. We had a grand time, though most of them were losers (in both the casino and general sense). They had no concept of probability and statistics. An actual conversation: ME: 'Okay. You have a normal quarter. You flip it 10 times and it comes up five heads and five tails. What is the probability of it being heads the 11th time?' GUY WITH MBA: '50/50' GUY WITH JD: '50/50' ME: 'Okay. You have a normal quarter. You flip it 10 times and it comes up 10 heads and 0 tails. What is the probability of it being heads the 11th time?' GUY WITH MBA: 'Like 90% because you're on a roll!' GUY WITH JD: 'Like 10% because it's due for a tails!' As long as there are smart people like this, the casinos shouldn't care if I take some of their money."-Matt Lipman
3781) "There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless."-Simone de Beauvoir
3782) "I get the sense -- and please feel free to contradict -- that when most folks look at me, they don't think 'TRIATHELETE.' I know this; I have always known this. And that's okay. Still, I have always wished I were a bit more coordinated and confident in that area, and I have always admired folks who actually know what it's like to not get winded when they use the bathroom in the middle of the night."-Edie Carey
3783) "(breathing slowly, trying to remain calm) No, I don't. I hate it. Actually, do you want to know what I really hate? I hate the fact that although I despise green pepper, everyone else alive seems to love it. I mean, it really doesn't bother me so much that I don't like the taste, because the reasons for that are certainly scientific or medical. No, what bothers me is that everyone else likes it and because they do, it is so much in evidence. On pizza, in salads....The other night I found some in stroganoff! Oh....yuck...And a myth has sprung up you know. People have said to me, 'Well, if you don't like it just pick it out.' But that's so stupid. Just because you pick it out doesn't mean the flavour's going to go away. Green pepper doesn't work like that. It is insidious and pervasive, like noxious fumes that kill you and your family while you sleep. Jesus, the way some people talk, you'd think it was parsley! I've even seen, yes it's true, green pepper that's been sliced cross-wise to make a sort of shamrock shaped ring. That's supposed to be decorative. Do you believe it? That's like making a garnish to make the bile really rise up in the throats of your dinner guests! (Estelle looks at the others who are standing quite motionless) Look, I know you all like green pepper and so you think I'm over-reacting. But what I'm trying to say is that acceptance of these foodstuffs can never be taken for granted. You can't assume it. It's not a given. No. This is something that has caused me a lot of unhappiness and I just don't want to go through that anymore................I do like red pepper though. I want you all to know that."-Stewart Lemoine, Cocktail's at Pam's
3784) "If you hate your neighbor, however good the food, you cannot enjoy your meal."-Theodore Zeldin
3785) "I make a really bad umbrella just like I said I would/ I'm full of holes and I do not stay put/ So don't think I'm keeping you dry it just is not raining yet/ When the clouds come to our sky we'll both be soaking wet/ I make a really bad clothesline so don't pin your hopes on me/ Do not try to tie me tree to tree/ I make such a bad clothesline I would not pin nothing on me/ 'Cause when you come back for it you might find/ it's gone in the breeze/ And I don't know I don't know I don't know what else you expected me to say/ Because I know you know I told you long ago that it would always be this way/ I'm not a good lighthouse cause I don't always shine/ I make a safe shore so hard to find/ I make a really bad anchor just like I told you so/ Cause I tend to get dragged and then I tend to let go/ And I make a really good lover when there's a clear path to the door/ Make a really good listener when I can't talk no more/ I make a really good friend when there's an end in sight/ I make a really good wrong to your right/ You say I live like I'm on ice skates going down a frozen hill/ I say baby it has always been like that maybe it always will/ And when I said that to you I did not mean to cause you pain/ But you can go ahead and blame me like you blame the weatherman for the rain/ And I don't know what else you expected me to say/ Because I know you know I told you long ago that it would always be this way/ I make a really bad umbrella just like I said I would/ I'm full of holes and I do not stay put/ So don't think I'm keeping you dry it just is not raining yet/ When the clouds come to our sky we'll both be soaking wet"-Kris Delmhorst, "Weatherman"
3786) "Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."-William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
3787) "But that the dread of something after death,/ The undiscover'd country from whose bourn/ No traveller returns, puzzles the will/ And makes us rather bear those ills we have/ Than fly to others that we know not of?"-William Shakespeare, Hamlet
3788) "Among the varieties of American innocence that were lost on September 11, perhaps the most intriguing was the mass discovery of what it feels like to be hated. 'How can they hate us,' people asked, 'just because we're Americans, when they don't even know us?' Well, I thought, welcome to my world. People hate homosexuals all the time, across great distances, from places where they feel threatened by us even though most of us would never contemplate living there."-Michael Schwartz, The Gay & Lesbian Review
3789) "This was a very large corporation. It would be impossible to know everything going on."-Jeffrey K. Skilling, Enron's former chief executive
3790) "I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now? Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."-John Lennon
3791) "it's weird to be in the presence of those, often few, people who inspire so much tremendous feeling that you can constantly be aware of how much you want to touch them...exhilarating and sad at the same time, especially when it feels like it is something that will not become a reality..."-Amy Karp
3792) "What's most insidious about MTV is that it commodifies precisely those things that young people believe are subversive. In other words, subversity itself has become a commodity. It's all a way to trick young people into believing that there's something unique about what they do, but this is all completely a corporately designed maneuver."-Todd Solondz
3793) "Freud said the guilt we feel when transgressing a taboo is what makes us 'civilized,' prompting us to set boundaries for ourselves. Some of these boundaries are clearly necessary, like prohibitions against murder and incest. Others no longer make sense, but we continue to observe them out of custom. It's important to examine our guilt, to decide whether it's really ours or if it's been handed down to us like an older sibling's ill-fitting clothes."-Genevieve Field, Literate Smut
3794) "Six o'clock in the evening and Alicia is waiting for Jake. She has in fact spent the better part of the last few months waiting for him, something she hates to acknowledge even to herself. Certainly no one else would know it. Her waiting is a near-miracle of camouflage and self-containment. She doesn't sit by the phone, doesn't even stay home. It's something invisible: an inner ear cocked, an ache."-Elissa Wald, "Holding Fire"
3795) "Man, I just had the weirdest dream, back on the bus there…There was this book I read, well, it was my dream so I guess I wrote it or something. But man, it was bizarre…it was like the premise for this whole book was that every thought you have creates its own reality, you know? It's like every choice or decision you make…the thing you chose not to do fractions off and becomes its own reality…I mean, it's like…you know in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy meets the Scarecrow and they do that little dance at the crossroads and they think about going down all these different roads and end up going in that one direction? All those other directions, just because you thought about them, became separate realities. I mean, they just went on from there and lived their lives, entirely different movies, but we'll never see it because we're trapped in this one reality restriction type thing."-Richard Linklater, Slacker
3796) "same place i've always been/ i'm just lost on these roads again/ and just as i got near the end/ i keep falling in the holes you left in me/ funny how i spent this time lashing out/ it's a lie - everything you felt til now"-Tara MacLean, "Jericho"
3797) "I've found that I have this insane talent for being a heartbreaker. Well, some might call it a talent. I call it a personal glitch, causing me to be forever viewed as the Grand High Superbitch of the Universe. It goes something like this: ME: 'Wow, you're really cool! I like you!' (drool, drool, drool.) WONDERFUL GUY: 'Yeah?' ME: 'Yeah! Can I have your kids?' GUY: 'Uh...' ME: 'Nevermind.' GUY: 'Um, okay. You wanna go out with me?' ME: (a very enthusiastic) 'YES!' (several days, weeks, or months down the road... ) GUY: 'I love you.' ME: 'Oh, really? That's, uh, nice...I have to go now.' (exit ME. )"-Kayte Siegle
3798) "I think for the truly selfish people, it doesn't even occur to them that they're selfish. That's what the real bastards are like [laughs], you know?"-Uma Thurman, Jane
3799) yes it's true/ i've gotten very/ moody over you/ don't think i don't/ sense your caution/ way across the room/ or across the phone lines/ big black ocean/ conversation brief/ we can't find/ a clear connection/ and i can't get relief/ why don't we both agree/ we're both afraid/ and too afraid to say/ if i said/ count to three/ move toward me/ would you meet me half way/ there are a thousand things about me/ i want only you to know/ but i can't got there alone/ you've got to show/ while you occupy me/ i command my dreams/ each day/ to bring you in me/ even thinly/ as the morning chases you away/ i half believe/ if i just picture us/ we will come true/ wishful thinking/ or my hopes sinking/ half depends on you/ …you are fully alive/ if you want to fly/ take this dive/if you want to kiss/ kiss for real/ i'll give you back everything you feel/ drive and space/ that peacful place/ you'd be my secret sharer/ front and back/ and all around/ the thin margin of error/ ah move too fast/ or move too slow/ or somewhere in between/ or navigate your/ perfect distance/ your get away is clean…"-Emily Saliers, "You've Got to Show"
3800) "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."-Albert Einstein