This month's entry is longer than usual because I devoted last month 100% to Robert Benchley quotes. Because Robert Benchley is awesome.
(And as always- this is where the stuff I think was funny on Twitter can be found.)
(And as always- this is where the stuff I think was funny on Twitter can be found.)
“A violent ground acquisition game such as football is, in fact, a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war.”
-Back to School
“Don't
get a haircut on a bad hair day.”
-Overheard from wife
"He’s
a goat. He’s a dumb, mean clump of meat that makes cheese."
-Hansel
Castro
“If
prayer is only a spasmodic cry at the time of crisis, then it is utterly
selfish, and we come to think of God as a repairman or a service agency to help
us only in our emergencies.”
-Howard
W. Hunter
“Honey...there
are no accidents. Almost every-damn-body is a suicide when you get right down
to it. Those are just the rules. You smoke and die of lung cancer? The big boy
upstairs says suicide. You eat at McDonald’s every damn day of your life and
your heart turns into a little ball of cement? Suicide. You get drunk and drive
into a tree or turn your liver into jelly? Suicide. Don’t matter how long or
short it takes people. Fact is, most people kill themselves and it’s no use
arguing about it. Like I said, those are the rules.”
-Gina
Ranalli, Suicide Girls in the Afterlife
“My
fear was boring.”
“Done
is better than good.”
-Elizabeth
Gilbert, Big Magic
“I’ve
come to embrace the world of blockbuster dominance because it’s ever been thus.
Except for a brief period in the 1970s, when Hollywood was totally off-balance,
the most popular American films of any period have been the most
crowd-pleasing. Sure, the genres that are popular change, and we have a
brighter view of the old days because we tend to only remember the great films
(millions of hours of total garbage movies have faded from our collective
consciousness, leaving entire decades looking like higher points than they
truly were), but you can go back to the very beginning of Hollywood and find
intellectuals and the artistically-inclined grousing about the base, commercial
nature of major motion pictures. People have been saying 'They don't make ‘em
like they used to' ever since the second day that they were making em.”
-Devin
Faraci
“You
see? I have the run of this place."
"Run?
More like the zombie shuffle."
-Stephen
Cole, Thieves Like Us (1937)
“I’m
not superstitious. I’m a witch. Witches aren’t superstitious. We are what
people are superstitious of.”
“They
say that there can never be two snowflakes that are exactly alike, but has
anyone checked lately?”
“Magic
is mostly movin’ stuff around.”
“If
you want something done, give it to someone who's busy!”
They
think I can see into their hearts, but no witch can do that. Not without surgery, at least.”
-Terry
Pratchett, Wintersmith
“We
sit down on the living room couch and hold each other, gaze out of the window,
waiting for the infant between us to wake up from death. After a couple of
days, it begins to smell. The flies are getting to it. The sun is setting in
the wrong direction.”
-Carlton
Mellick III
“When
I’m with her I believe it. When I start to figure, it all goes hooey.”
-James
M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice
“The
literature about booms and busts tends to be written in a tone of Olympian
detachment by some presumably omniscient narrator with a gift for rendering the
folly of man. The writer of these histories is usually amused, wryly; his
reader, he assumes, shares his knowingness, understands that markets were ever
thus, there is nothing new under the Wall Street sun, etc. Everything, in
retrospect, is obvious. But if everything were obvious, authors of histories of
financial folly would be rich. They’d spare themselves the trouble of making
their living by writing books and articles about the financial folly and open
hedge funds.”
-Michael
Lewis, Panic
"Ice
is forming on the tips of my wings
Unheeded
warnings, I thought I thought of everything
No
navigator to find my way home
Unladen,
empty and turned to stone
A
soul in tension that's learning to fly
Condition
grounded but determined to try"
-Pink
Floyd, “Learning to Fly”
“Forget
the glamour and mumble a jackhammer
Under
your breath”
-Faith
No More, “Caffeine”
“I
think all introductions to Neil Gaiman’s work will always be misleading, he
said, talking about himself in the third person which proves he’s finally gone
mad after being in a windowless, mirrored-ceiling room too long.”
“The
problem with my stuff– and also the strength of my stuff– is that whatever you
read first, the rest of it won’t be quite like that, though it’s all come out
of the same head.”
-Neil
Gaiman
Husband:
I had an on-the-job injury, which I won’t go into the details of here.
Wife:
He shot himself in the scrotum with a bottle rocket.
Interviewer:
Huh. Well, getting back to…
Wife:
Do you have any idea how much pus a burned scrotum can produce?
Interviewer:
No.
Wife:
Most people don’t.
-Dave
Barry’s Money Secrets
“I'm
a substitute for another guy
I
look pretty tall but my heels are high
The
simple things you see are all complicated
I
look pretty young, but I'm just backdated”
-The
Who, “Substitute”
“Living
legends are a dying breed, there ain’t too many left. To tell the truth I ain’t
been feeling real hot lately my damn self.”
-Waylon
Jennings
“During
Prohibition, [my grandfather] used to hide his shine in the basement of the
county courthouse, because it was the last place the authorities would think to
look. “
-Brian
Keene
“It
ain’t what they call you, it's what you answer to.”
-W.C.
Fields
“When
I die...you stay away from my funeral.”
-Spongebob
Squarepants
“I
don't wanna have to shout it out
I
don't want my hair to fall out
I
don't wanna be filled with doubt
I
don't wanna be a good boy scout
I
don't wanna have to learn to count
I
don't wanna have the biggest amount
I
don't wanna grow up”
-Tom
Waits, “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up”
“Pray
for deft towel management.”
“Thoughtful
details such as little trays for storing jewelery are undermined by making us
hang our coats in a jacket-length space, beside our muddy boots.”
“Who
has time to wade through page after page of non-surgical facelifts and triple
detox wraps?”
“Can
we just have a nice cotton robe that fits, please?”
-Lisa
Johnson, an article about luxury spas
“You’re
a kite dancing in a hurricane.”
-Spectre
"The
problem with being an adult is that, if you're in the wrong and you're being
chastised for being in the wrong, you will lash out, because that scenario
reminds you of being a child. But you're not a child any more, are you? You're
a big bad grown-up...But don't let that pride get in the way of common sense:
if you know you're being a dick, just apologize and that'll be the end of it.
No more slammed doors, no more tears, no more having to maintain the act that
you're annoyed when really all you want to do is just be normal again, because
being pissed off is actually incredibly boring."
-Vice.com
"Mommy's
alright, daddy's alright,
They
just seem a little weird."
-Cheap
Trick
"He
was beaten to death...with a copy of Atlas Shrugged."
"That's
that big novel by Ayn Rand?"
"That's
the one."
"'Ayn'
rhymes with 'sane'?"
"Rhymes
with 'mine.'"
-Matt
Ruff, Sewer, Gas & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy
“You
see how I live: shadows and silence, leaving things as I find them because I
have no reason to disturb them. But there are things that I have known, even
though I never wished to know them and cannot give them a name.”
-Thomas
Ligotti, Grimscribe
"Be
cheerful while you are alive."
-Ptah-hotep,
24th century B.C.E.
"Soon
the FBI will have a Thousand Most Wanted List. Our heroes will be hunted like
beasts in the jungle."
-Abbie
Hoffman, Steal This Book
"Let
us begin by committing ourselves to the truth, to see it like it is and to tell
it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live with the
truth. That's what we'll do."
-Richard
Nixon, accepting the Republican nomination for president, 1968
“With
the increase in crime during the past decade has come a corresponding increase
in crime prevention. Or perhaps it is vice versa.”
“For
a nation which has an almost evil reputation for bustle, bustle, bustle, and
rush, rush, rush, we spend an enormous amount of time standing around in line in
front of windows, just waiting. It would be all right if we were Spanish
peasants and could strum guitars and hum, or even stab each other, while we
were standing in line.”
“I
have now reached an age when I feel that I am pretty well able to take care of
myself against animate enemies. By ‘animate enemies’ I mean living people, like
burglars, drunks, or police- people who set out with a definite idea in their
minds of getting me.”
-Robert
Benchley, No Poems, or Around the World Backwards & Sideways
“And
how about your ability to predict the future of your own relationships? Most
relationships end badly, so we know that the majority of Americans are not good
at predicting the future. Have all of your relationships worked out the way you
expected? Mine haven’t.
“I
think you’ll agree that humans are terrible at predicting the future. But
that’s not the problem. The problem is that we think we are not terrible at
predicting the future. Our certainty in the face of overwhelming uncertainty is
irrational.”
-Scott
Adams
“What he lacked in personality, he more than made up for in saliva.”
“None of this is real. There's a man with a typewriter…”
-Deadpool (Comic)
”Everything
is possible, but nothing is real.”
“You
gave me fortune, you gave me fame
You
gave me power in your god's name
I'm
every person you need to be
I'm
the cult of personality.”
-Living
Colour
“There
are no flowers on your grave,
There
are no chains.”
-Amorphis
“My brain is hanging upside down
I need something to slow me down”
-Ramones, “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg”
“Tanya’s
eyes finally fell on me. The disdain in her gaze was almost tactile.”
“A
smile lit up his face as he squeezed my hand and placed a kiss on my forehead.
A kiss that let loose a dozen butterflies in my stomach.”
“Despite
my guilt, my body was still quivering, a veil of panic still upon me.”
“Everything
about the scene was so romantic. The moon, the stars, the sugary beaches… I
wished that by magic we’d already gone past the stage of getting together and
he would just take me in his arms and kiss me now.”
“I
opened my eyes and looked up at him. And I wished I hadn’t. His dreamy blue
eyes looking down at me with concern just made me yearn for him even more. I
pushed away the sheets, and without saying a word, walked out onto the balcony.
Leaning
over the railing and looking down at the ground below, I felt him approach
behind me. “I don’t know how I forgot.”
“It’s
okay,” I said quietly, afraid if I spoke louder my voice might crack.
“No,
it’s not. And I can see that it’s not. I need to make it up to you somehow.””
“It
was all I could do to keep my voice from breaking, my lips from trembling with
disappointment. I acted as cool as I could.”
“I
just wanted sleep to take me, to wash away the memories of today and hopefully
bring in a brighter tomorrow. But I couldn’t. I kept thinking of Ben. And his
blonde, bikini-clad ex.”
“They
only ever saw the side of Camilla that my father saw. A dutiful housewife,
devoted to her only daughter. They didn’t know that when the house became
silent but for her and my breathing, a different woman emerged.”
“As
the years passed and I entered high school, I often thought about the last
words I remembered Camilla speaking to me. She’d said that I should expect life
to dish out my fair share of surprises...But then I met Derek Novak. He,
certainly, was a surprise that was far from fair…”
-Bella
Forrest, A Shade of Vampire
“Loyalty
to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify. Because the players are
always changing, the team can move to another city. You’re actually rooting for
the clothes when you get right down to it. You are standing and yelling and
cheering for your clothes to beat the clothes from another city.”
-Jerry
Seinfeld
“Now that our ferocious grandfathers have driven off the bears and killed the barbarians, male ferocity just complicates life in the family and community.”
-Jon Gottschall, The Professor in a Cage
-Compiled by Phony McFakename
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