“I think the worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades.” — Demetri Martin

“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”–Albert Camus

“The lure of imaginary totality is momentarily frozen before the dialectic of desire hastens on within symbolic chains.”  — Fred Botting,  Making Monstrous: Frankenstein, Criticism, Theory, (Manchester University Press, 1991)  Third Place Winner, Bad Writing Contest, 1997 http://denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm

“Responsibility accrues through privilege. People like you and me have an unbelievable amount of privilege and therefore we have a huge amount of responsibility. We live in free societies where we are not afraid of the police; we have extraordinary wealth available to us by global standards. If you have those things, then you have … More Quote of the Day

“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” ― Albert Einstein

“How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquility.”–Marcus Aurelius   Another version:   To shrug it all off and wipe it clean–every annoyance and distraction–and reach utter stillness. Child’s play. (Hays translation)

“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.”–Noam Chomsky

“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.”–Steve Martin

“Historically, the most terrible things – war, genocide, and slavery – have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.” ― Howard Zinn

“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.”–Robert Cormier