June 8, 2012
"[Céline] forcibly washes another dreamer’s face using a wet, live kitten. (I know the feeling from her records.)"

— Carl Wilson, recapping dreams people have about Céline Dion as reported to a blog that interprets people’s Céline-Dion-related dreams, in Let’s Talk About Love, p. 107.

April 12, 2012
"…blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled
That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger
To sound what stop she please."

— Hamlet, III.ii.69-72.

2:07pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZnxlayJY4q6d
  
Filed under: quote literature hamlet 
June 6, 2011
"It is thought in certain circles that the Pennsylvania Dutch created the modern, curiously engineered American pie from these rock-hard early models. People who have sat in chairs made by the Pennsylvania Dutch may find this theory very credible."

This is one of the best bits of satire I’ve read in a long, long time.

It’s gloppy, it’s soggy, it’s un-American. - By Nathan Heller - Slate Magazine

May 17, 2011
"And what hinders you more than the undisciplined passions of your heart? A good and devout man firstly sets in order in his mind whatever tasks he has at hand, and never allows them to lead him into occasions of sin, but humbly subjects them to the dictates of sound judgment. Who has a fiercer struggle than he who tries to conquer himself?"

— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Bk. 1, Ch. 3

May 14, 2011
"Across Louisiana to the Texas border, crowds would flock to hear [Amédé] Ardoin. ‘Oh, that was some music,’ Milton Ardoin remembers. ‘And when he was playing over there to Mr. Quincy Davis’ place, he had a song for when the dance closed up, you know? Every time he would play that, the fights would take place. I said, ‘Uncle.’ He said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Don’t play that no more. It must be the devil what you play now, that little two-step."

from The King of Zydeco by Michael Tisserand, p. 57.

I’m ready to hear people talk like this again.

May 12, 2011
"He held off interpretation for now. Until the stupendous cluster headache vanished into last traces, until he learned what Ava needed from him and how to give it, until he became self-sufficient within the Friendreth and stopped requiring Biller’s care packages of sandwiches and pints of Tropicana, interpretation could wait."

— Jonathan Lethem, Chronic City, p. 318