Quote of the Day

[Golgot]

Ian McDonald on researching other cultures so he can write about them...

'It takes years. I read a lot. I travel a lot - and as much as I can afford. I talk to people, I read the papers. I cook the food. I buy the music, I follow the sports teams. I try to second-guess what the government will do in international politics. I learn a bit of the language. I study the religion. I study the etiquette. I try and work out what the day-to-day details are like. I watch people... ...I take thousands of photographs of boring everyday things. I look at what's on sale in gas stations and what that tells you about a culture. I study the ads. I talk to more people. I get hammered on the local booze. I try to take the country's political position in the world news. I watch television. I read books for those tiny details. Is this like Method Acting?... ...I love it. Of course I get it wrong. Then again, I can write about what's going on at the bottom of my street and get it wrong...particularly my street.'

[honeykid]

Architecture is the art of how to waste space. - Philip Johnson (1906 - 2005)

Doubting God's existence is okay and perfectly acceptable within Christianity as long as the person doubting remains obedient and committed to the Christian path. - Real Live Preacher, Real Live Preacher weblog, 06-10-04

We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language. - Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Canterville Ghost, 1882

We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners. - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), "You Never Can Tell" (1898), act I

[PumaMan]

"The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic."

-- Charles Darwin

[PumaMan]

"Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth."

-- Albert Einstein (after Gandhi's death)

[Caitlyn]

I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place. ~ Winston Churchill, 1937


:#

[PumaMan]

I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place. ~ Winston Churchill, 1937


:#

If you look around you will find other, not very pleasant, things about Winston Churchill.

I really dislike finding "not very pleasant" things about people that I admired. It makes me more pessimistic than I already am about humankind.

[Caitlyn]

If you look around you will find other, not very pleasant, things about Winston Churchill.

I really dislike finding "not very pleasant" things about people that I admired. It makes me more pessimistic than I already am about humankind.


I really didn't have a problem with the fact he thought no one had done "a great wrong" ... that's been the mindset of some for ages... but the "higher grade race" phrase got me... and had he ever met my great grandfather, I feel he might have learned a thing or two about that...

[PumaMan]

I really didn't have a problem with the fact he thought no one had done "a great wrong" ... that's been the mindset of some for ages... but the "higher grade race" phrase got me... and had he ever met my great grandfather, I feel he might have learned a thing or two about that...

He said some truly awful things about black people and Gandhi and (India) Indians, especially when he was young. He mellowed a bit as he got older.

[honeykid]

If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone. - Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them. - Marquis de Flers Robert and Arman de Caillavet

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. - Unknown, Hanlon's Razor

Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything. - Frank Dane

[DexterRiley]

I really didn't have a problem with the fact he thought no one had done "a great wrong" ... that's been the mindset of some for ages... but the "higher grade race" phrase got me... .


I couldn't agree more. The notion that a particular race, or nation somehow has dominion over another is ludicrous.

History is filled with atrocities committed in the name of this very idea, often as a shield to extract natural resources, be it precious metals or energy.

[DexterRiley]

"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."

--- Tolstoy

[DexterRiley]

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."



--Max Planck



"The view that the sun stands motionless at the center of the universe is foolish, philosophically false, utterly heretical, because contrary to Holy Scripture. The view that the earth is not the center of the universe and even has a daily rotation is philosophically false, and at least an erroneous belief. "

Holy Office, Roman Catholic Church, edict of March 5, 1616

"Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know."

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

[mark f]

"I prefer to think that God is not dead, just drunk."

"The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it."

"I don't try to guess what a million people will like. It's hard enough to know what I like."

"There is a wilful lemming-like persistance in remaking past successes time after time. They can't make them as good as they are in our memories, but they go on doing them and each time it's a disaster. Why don't we remake some of our bad pictures - I'd love another shot at Roots of Heaven - and make them good?"

- John Huston

[Caitlyn]

You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy. ~ Eric Hoffer

[honeykid]

Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier.
Blore's Razor

About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
Herbert Hoover (1874 - 1964)

Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe.
Jackie Mason

I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.
Herb Caen

[mark f]

"Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint you can at it."

"You bet I arrived overnight. Over a few hundred nights in the Catskills, in vaudeville, in clubs and on Broadway."

"If you're not cooking with joy, happiness and love, you're not cooking well."

"I became an entertainer not because I wanted to but because I was meant to."

- Danny Kaye

[mark f]

"Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what's wrong with it."

[After viewing The Sound of Music]: "That was the only time I've ever rooted for the Nazis."

"The important thing is to learn through experience. The more you do the more you learn. I don't think anyone can teach acting from a podium."

- Rex Harrison

[mark f]

"There was no model for what I tried to do with dance ... and the thing Fred Astaire and I used to bitch about was that critics didn't know how to categorize us. They called us tap dancers because that was considered the American style. But neither of us were basically tap dancers."

"I never wanted to be a dancer. It's true! I wanted to be a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates."

"If Fred Astaire is the Cary Grant of dance, I'm the Marlon Brando. Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat."

"The finest all-around performer we ever had in America was Judy Garland. There was no limit to her talent. She was the quickest, brightest person I ever worked with."

- Gene Kelly

[honeykid]

To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal. - Peter Ustinov (1921 - 2004)

It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting. - Tom Stoppard, Jumpers (1972) act 1

I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world. - Georges Duhamel (1884 - 1966)

You can observe a lot just by watching. - Yogi Berra

[DexterRiley]

There may be a new album, and there may not. Right now, we're encouraging bootlegging because there have been some great live things that ended up on the Internet. Rather than try to stop it, we like it. If nobody gave a crap about you, they wouldn't bother to bootleg you.

- Burton Cummings

[mark f]

"My agent had told me that he was going to make me the Janet Gaynor of England - I was going to play all the sweet roles. Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers."

"I'd love to see more women working as directors and producers. Today it's almost impossible to do it unless you are an actress or writer with power. I wouldn't hesitate right this minute to hire a talented woman if the subject matter were right."

"The beautiful thing about Warner Bros. when I was there was I only worked with great people, actors, directors, producers. But when I left, nobody said goodbye."

- Ida Lupino

[mark f]

"Comedies of manners swiftly become obsolete when there are no longer any manners"

"Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs."

"Having to read a footnote resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love."

"[Sophia Loren] should have been sculpted in chocolate truffles so that the world could devour her."

- Noel Coward

[Caitlyn]

It is not a question of who dances but of who or what does not dance. ~ Ruth Saint Denis

[mark f]

"I stopped appearing as Dracula in 1972 because in my opinion the presentation of the character had deteriorated to such an extent, particularly bringing him into the contemporary day and age, that it really no longer had any meaning."

(On his friendship with Peter Cushing) "I don't want to sound gloomy, but at some point of your lives, every one of you will notice that you have in your life one person, one friend whom you love and care for very much. That person is so close to you that you are able to share some things only with him. For example, you can call that friend, and from the very first maniacal laugh or some other joke you will know who is at the other end of that line. We used to do that with him so often. And then when that person is gone, there will be nothing like that in your life ever again."

"Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff didn't like the word 'horror'. They, like I, went for the French description: 'the theatre of the fantastique'."

"One should try anything he can in his career, except folkdance and incest."

- Christopher Lee

[honeykid]

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow. - Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

It is a great ability to be able to conceal one's ability. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613 - 1680), Maxims, 1665

Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read. - Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993), quoted in Linda Botts, "Loose Talk" (1980)

The words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels. - Hazrat Inayat Khan

[eMilee]

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. ~Mark Twain

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair. ~Douglas MacArthur

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional. ~Chili Davis

Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many. ~Author Unknown

[PumaMan]

"Ninety percent of everything is crud."

-- Theodore Sturgeon (science fiction writer)

This became Sturgeon's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_Law

[7thson]

"If you can't sleep, wake up"

[ferb82]

Form is temporary, the class is permanent

[mark f]

"To my mind, the actor has this great responsibility of playing another human being ... it's like taking on another person's life and you have to do it as sincerely and honestly as you can."

"The sitting around on the set is awful, but I always figure that's what they pay me for. The acting I do for free."

[On Double Indemnity] "It was, in fact, the third lead. I debated accepting it. Emanuel Goldberg told me that at my age it was time to begin thinking of character roles, to slide into middle and old age with the same grace as that marvelous actor Lewis Stone. The decision made itself. It remains one of my favorites."

"I have not collected art. Art collected me. I never found paintings. They found me. I have never even owned a work of art. They owned me."

- Edward G. Robinson

[PumaMan]

"Only the dead have seen the end of war."

-- George Santayana
-- Plato (?)

[mark f]

"Liam Neeson, quite frankly, is sex on legs. Always has been".

"'My appearance has changed a lot over the years, but it has far more to do with how I feel about being a woman. I've never thought of myself as vain. When I was at Cambridge, I shaved my head and wore baggy clothes. What I did was to desexualise myself. It was partly to do with the feminism of that time: militant and grungy. That's all changed now, though I don't think it is liberating to get your t!ts out. I don't hold with that. But I am much more comfortable with being a woman now than I was in my twenties."

"I'm very lucky I write as well. I don't see how I could be as effective a mother as I'd like to be if I had to go away and act all the time. So I've sort of pulled back from acting, which is fine, because I've found over the years - and this was a surprise to me - that I can get the same kind of creative satisfaction from writing as I have heretofore gotten out of acting. It's very encouraging, really."

- Emma Thompson

[The Dame]

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors, and miss.

Unknown

[honeykid]

Every human being on this earth is born with a tragedy, and it isn't original sin. He's born with the tragedy that he has to grow up. That he has to leave the nest, the security, and go out to do battle. He has to lose everything that is lovely and fight for a new loveliness of his own making, and it's a tragedy. A lot of people don't have the courage to do it. - Helen Hayes (1900 - 1993), in Roy Newquist, Showcase, 1966

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance. - Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

People choose the paths that grant them the greatest rewards for the least amount of effort. - David Shore, House M.D., Pilot, 2004

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. - Alvin Toffler

[mark f]

"I started out to be a sex fiend but couldn't pass the physical."

"I kept the same suit for six years - and the same dialog. We just changed the title of the picture and the leading lady."

"Just after we shot Secret Ceremony (1968), lesbianism came in ... I'm no damned good as a lesbian."

"They think I don't know my lines. That's not true. I'm just too drunk to say 'em."

- Robert Mitchum

[wintertriangles]

This is brilliant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M4tdMsg3ts&feature=player_embedded#!

[DexterRiley]

Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.


William F. Buckley Jr.

I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not a drug. Marijuana is an herb and a flower. God put it here. If He put it here and He wants it to grow, what gives the government the right to say that God is wrong?

- Willie Nelson

Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade - and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity.

- George Soros

[mark f]

"I really think that living is the process of going from complete certainty to complete ignorance."

"Actually, when I was a kid I was really more aware of the star and the handprints in Grauman's Chinese more than I was aware of anything else, including the Oscar. I wanted to have a star. I wanted to be able to see, you know, old gum on my star."

"The motion picture business is run by corporate thieves."

"Steven Spielberg is the only person I've come across who fits my criteria of genius, and I don't throw that word around. Genius is imagination and attention to detail. The ability to achieve to the minutest detail what you perceive in your imagination. I don't think there's another person on earth who's as great a plot structuralist or better storyteller."

- Richard Dreyfuss

[DexterRiley]

“I think we should raise taxes on the very rich, and I think maybe we should cut taxes for the middle class, upper middle class”. “If you’re not going to get it from guys like me, why should we get it from the people who served us lunch today,” ... Warren Buffett, Oct 7, 2010

The third richest man in the world, billionaire Warren Buffett said in a Fortune magazine conference that the best solution for the economy would be a significant increase in taxes for billionaires. According to Mr Buffett this action would help the economy to recover faster.

Great Article. Its a damn crying shame this isn't headline news or something.

How come Larry King doesn't have this guy on?

http://www.livingorganicnews.com/business/2010/warren-buffett-taxes-should-be-increased-for-the-rich-people/2017/

[honeykid]

If you need a friend in Washington, get a dog. - Harry S. Truman

When I tell any truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do. - William Blake

If you're going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you, but the bureaucracy won't. - Admiral H. Rickover

Success in almost any field depends more on energy and drive than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders. - Sloan Wilson.

[mark f]

"You know, every night when I go out on stage, there's always one nagging fear in the back of my mind. I'm always afraid that somewhere out there, there is one person in the audience that I'm *not* going to offend!"

- Don Rickles

[Golgot]

NELL (http://twitter.com/cmunell) is an AI programme combing the net for information, and then tweeting what it thinks the information means. This not going entirely well at the moment...

I think "Unicorns" is an #Animal

I think "recipes persons" is a #Vegetable

I think "sarah palin" is a #Male

I think "regulatory risk" is a #BoardGame

[Gunny]

"Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys. Look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death!" - Sun Tzu

[Caitlyn]

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. ~ Ivy Baker Priest

[n3wt]

"You know that everytime I try to go, Where I really want to be, Its already where I am, 'Cause Im already there"

[mark f]

Who wrote that poem? Let me guess, a song lyric? I'm ignorant, n3wt.

I mean, I do know the "No matter where you go" quote.

[honeykid]

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. - Winston Churchill

Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. - John F. Kennedy

The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time. - Franklin P. Adams

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians. - Charles De Gaulle

[Gunny]

“Courage is fear holding on a minute longer” - George Patton

[mark f]

"It's important not to indicate. People don't try to show their feelings, they try to hide them."

"I've never been one of those actors who has touted myself as a fascinating human being. I had to decide early on whether I was to be an actor or a personality."

"Al [Pacino], over the years we've taken roles from one another. People have tried to compare us to one another, to pit us against one another and to tear us apart personally. I've never seen the comparison frankly. I'm clearly much taller, more the leading-man type. Honestly, you just may be the finest actor of our generation - with the possible exception of me."

"Some people say, "New York's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there". I say that about other places."

- Robert De Niro

[eMilee]

from Mae West... I think I love this woman even more now and think I may have to adopt some of these personal mottos.

---''Look your best - who said love is blind?''

---''Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.''

----''When I'm good I'm very, very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better.''

[Gunny]

Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance - Sun Tzu

[mark f]

"People seem to have this strange idea that films can influence people to be violent, but in my sincere opinion film only reflects the violence of society."

"The sooner we admit our capacity for evil the less apt we are to destroy each other."

"There is a fear about sex in motion pictures, as if sex would undermine morality."

"Arnold [Schwarzenegger] has no ego. You can say anything to him. In fact, during his first day on the set [of Total Recall] he sat me down and told me, 'I won't be offended if you talk to me in a direct manner. Say what you feel.' That made it easy because I wouldn't have to be diplomatic and say, 'Arnold, could you perhaps move over here and give me a different angle?' I could just go, 'Arnold, this is bad. You look stupid!'"

- Paul Verhoeven

[honeykid]

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. ~Elbert Hubbard, The Note Book, 1927

I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones. ~John Peel

Never say, "oops." Always say, "Ah, interesting." ~Author Unknown

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. ~Niels Bohr

[Caitlyn]

Give thanks for what you are now, and keep fighting for what you want to be tomorrow. ~ Fernanda Miramontes-Landeros

[mark f]

"I couldn't be a director because I couldn't put up with the actors. I don't have the patience. Why, I'd probably kill the actors, not to mention some of the beautiful actresses."

On drinking: "Hell, I used to take two-week lunch hours!"

On being asked why he was always billed above Katharine Hepburn in their films together, when politeness dictated the other way around: "Because this is a movie, you chowder-head, not a lifeboat!"

"There were times when my pants were so thin, I could sit on a dime and know if it was heads or tails."

- Spencer Tracy

[mark f]

"Human beings share the same common problems. A film can only be understood if it depicts these properly."

"A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet."

"I like unformed characters. This may be because, no matter how old I get, I am still unformed myself."

"I am a person who is rarely impressed by actors, but in the case of Mifune, I was completely overwhelmed."

"Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing."

- Akira Kurosawa

[Brodinski]

"When a person says that everything you do that's extraordinary or unusual is luck, I ask everybody here to ask him: "is he god-fearing?". If he tells you "no", that speaks that he don't even had belief and you can't reason with these people. Because they don't believe that it can happen to nobody."

- Bernard Hopkins

[mark f]

[On returning to work after having a baby] "NBC has me under contract. The baby and I only have a verbal agreement."

[On Matthew McConaughey] "He was always taking his shirt off, he's like "Yeah, here's my deal, I'm hot." We had a meeting one day at like 11 o'clock, right before the show and he walks into the meeting shirtless wearing this like old musty sarong ... He doesn't smell great, no."

[On Paris Hilton] "She's a piece of *****. The people at "Saturday Night Live" were like, 'Maybe she'll be fun, maybe she won't take herself so seriously.' She takes herself so seriously! She's unbelievably dumb and so proud of how dumb she is. She looks like a tranny up close ... Also, you would walk down the hall and find what just looked like nasty wads of Barbie hair on the stairs ... Her hair is like a Fraggle."

"Mrs. Palin is an inspiration to working mothers everywhere because she bailed on her job right before Fourth of July weekend. You are living my dream. Thank you, Mrs. Palin!"

- Tina Fey

[Silas]

"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs... Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home"

Mahatma Gandhi

[mark f]

"A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body."

"A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one."

"A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle."

"Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it."

- Benjamin Franklin

[mark f]

"Film-making has become a kind of hysterical pregnancy."

"If we can make films that are useful as well as entertaining, marvelous. But cinema must reflect the temper of the times. We must choose material not only on the basis of whether we feel deeply, but on whether or not anyone's bloody well going to see it."

"Watching one's own work is painful... It doesn't matter what the film is. In a way, films are all little tombstones laid end to end with a bit of filler tape holding them together."

[On George C. Scott] "Intelligent, constructive, decent, professional. If there was a difference of opinion between us, we worked it out in five or ten minutes."

- Richard Lester

[mark f]

"I don't act. I react."

"If I had my career over again? Maybe I'd say to myself, 'Speed it up a little'."

"I have my own rules and adhere to them. The rule is simple but inflexible. A James Stewart picture must have two vital ingredients: it will be clean and it will involve the triumph of the underdog over the bully."

- James Stewart

[Mrs. Darcy]

"Health food may be good for the conscience, but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better."


~Robert Redford

[eMilee]

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. (http://thinkexist.com/quotation/what_we_call_the_beginning_is_often_the_end-and/9429.html)”
T.S. Elliot

[mark f]

“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves."

- Bill Vaughn

[Michael Grant]

"As smart as an apple" - smart people.

[The Prestige]

My quote is to live for yourself. Not other people. Never let anybody compromise your existence. It's not worth it.

[wintertriangles]

When attacked by critics: "I'll see you in my next play, you bastard"

-Johan Strindberg

[NickPierson]

“Be Who You Are and Say What You Feel Because Those Who Mind Don't Matter and Those Who Matter Don't Mind.”

~ Dr. Seuss

[earlsmoviepicks]

"Never wrestle with a pig, cause you both get muddy....and the pig loves it." George Bernard Shaw

[genesis_pig]

"never wrestle with a pig, cause you both get muddy....and the pig loves it." george bernard shaw

:d

[Ðèstîñy]

"You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."

"'Twas not my lips you kissed, but my soul."

"Anyone can catch your eye, but it takes someone special to catch your heart."

"Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, and the joy in a heart."

[linespalsy]

Weirdly fractured views on moving from Vietnam, to Hong Kong, to the U.S. in the 60s/70s, from two interviews with Tsui Hark:

Hong Kong was a totally different world. It compared to nothing I'd seen in my life to that point. That's odd too, because when I went to Texas to study, everything was Saigon, Saigon, Saigon and Vietnam was the word on every American's lips. I felt instantly more at home there than I ever did in Hong Kong.


QUESTION: What was your impression of Texas?
TSUI HARK: I was very confused and frustrated. I couldn't get used to that kind of place, where the houses are very scattered. It's quite different from Hong Kong. After three years, I feel like, it's boring here - better to go back home and start from zero. But I wanted to go around America first. So in 1974, I went to New York. And I got stuck there.
You found New York to be more like Hong Kong?
Just like Hong Kong. Very business, very crowded, very stink, and people very nervous.
Where did you stay?
I rent an apartment with a friend on Delancey Street [on the Lower East Side of Manhattan]. That was terrible. One day they broke through the wall and got our money - all twenty buck. There's a big hole in the wall, and we didn't know how to fix it.
In New York, you worked with Christine Choy, the documentary film-maker?
Yes. She had a grant to make a film called From Spikes to Spindles, a history of the Asian-American.

On screen-writers and producing films in Hong Kong:

TIME: How did Hong Kong manage to develop such a script-less industry?
Hark: There are a few reasons. One of the problems before was that if you gave a script to an actor, it would sometimes end up in somebody else's hands, and no director or producer wanted that to happen. Or you would have a script but couldn't get the actor you wanted for it. Hong Kong is such a fast place--if an actor/actress that you want to use for an idea you have is available, then the script can follow later.

TIME: You make some of the grandest, most complex films in Hong Kong. I imagine you'd have trouble with scriptwriters.
Hark: Yes. My common experience is to fight with them all the time. As a result some people think I'm very demanding.

TIME: Some directors call you dictatorial?
Hark: Yes that too. But the creative process needs that.

On some of his own films, in his early days as a "new wave" director:

How was Butterfly Murders recieved?
It's really a flop. People get very disappointed in the film. And it was supposed to be low budget, but I think I get a big head, and I spent maybe 3 million Hong Kong dollars. I was quite scared that I ruin some people's life, that I use too much money.
Nevertheless, you turned around and made another movie, about cannibalism - We're Going to Eat You.
That's a film with a lot of Roger Corman elements. It didn't turn out to be good, either. This glorious title of new-wave director! (Laughs.) I became very disappointed in myself. I was thinking about not making film any more - do something else, teach in school or something.
Instead, you directed Dangerous Encounter of the First Kind - a nasty piece of work.
At that time I was quite angry, and I tried to do something anarchistic. When you don't care what you put on the screen, a heavy burden is lifted from your shoulder, and you start to make film like a student. And that becomes effective in some way. That film did not do good business, because too violent, and it doesn't have a star. But I enjoyed the process of it.

[...]

You've been called the Stephen Spielberg of Hong Kong.
I've heard that. But I don't know - it's unfair to him, I think (laughs). It's unfair to me too: he's so rich.

I'm guessing the TIMEasia interview was translated from Cantonese, hence the lack of broken English.

[mark f]

"I don't know how much movies should entertain. To me, I'm always interested in movies that scar. The thing I love about Jaws is the fact that I've never gone swimming in the ocean again."

"People will say, 'There are a million ways to shoot a scene,' but I don't think so. I think there are two, maybe. And the other one is wrong."

"I do agree you can't just make movies three hours long for no apparent reason. For a romantic comedy to be three hours long, that's longer than most marriages."

"I have a philosophy about the two extremes of filmmaking. The first is the "Kubrick way", where you're at the end of an alley in which four guys are kicking the ***** out of a wino. Hopefully, the audience members will know that such a scenario is morally wrong, even though it's not presented as if the viewer is the one being beaten up; it's more as if you're witnessing an event. Inversely, there's the "Spielberg way", where you're dropped into the middle of the action and you're going to live the experience vicariously - not only through what's happening, but through the emotional flow of what people are saying. It's a much more involved style. I find myself attracted to both styles at different times, but mostly I'm interested in just presenting something and letting people decide for themselves what they want to look at."

- David Fincher

[linespalsy]

Two quotes tangentially related to power and Japanese women.

No matter how [Yukio] Mishima tried to conquer his lack of political sense, there was no way he could succeed insofar as politics involves influencing others. Mishima knew nothing concrete about the type of people to whom he should assert his beliefs. Consequently, the groupe that ultimately formed, called the Shield Society, consisted only of pure, innocent youths. Their very purity and innocence, however, wouldn't influence others. Mishima influenced only himself. And because Mishima was paying for the Shield Society with his own money, this was not politics. Politics is something done with other people's money. People become political by spending money, and the basis of political action is getting other peopel to spend money. Spending your own money to get some youths together is not politics at all. For the most part, politics is asserting yourself to old women. Whenever the reform movement loses in a local election, my old mother, for example, says "Darn! Those incomprehensible old women voted for the Liberal Democratic Party," sighing and disregarding the fact that she herself is an old woman... Thus, Mishima's urging the members of the Self-Defense Forces to rally was a heart-breaking act. Politics is influencing old women and setting them in motion. If you can't set old women in motion, how are you going to be able to move the members of the Self-Defense Forces?
... Someone of Mishima's intelligence must have known this, even if unconsciously. However, Mishima's only possible political act was his appeal to the members of the Self-Defense Forces. To put it another way, Mishima may have selected the peole to whom it was most difficult to appeal. Even if someone had cautioned Mishima to appeal to the nearest old woman, he probably would have refused. That was Mishima's political aesthetic sense. Terribly self-indulgent, terribly conventuional. lll However, Mishima must have foreseen that the members fo the Self Defense Forces wouldn't heed his appeal. We shouldn't ask now whether he thought they would listen to his speech more kindly and whether at the last instant he thought he had been betrayed in that respect.

Nagisa Oshima, Mishima Yukio: The Road to Defeat of One Lacking in Political Sense (1970); collected in Cinema, Sensorship, and the State.

---------------------------------------

Japanese girls, for some reason, are among [Jackie Chan's] most obsessively loyal fans, and, largely for fear of upsetting them, he keeps quiet about his many romantic involvements, and about the existence of his teenage son, Jackson, the product of a long-dissolved marriage to the Taiwanese movie actress Lum Fang-gew. When, a few years ago, it was falsely reported that Chan planned to remarry, one Japanese girl swallowed poison in front of his office building, and was narrowly rescued; another jumped in front of a train, and was killed. "This makes me a lot of trouble," Chan said, adding that other female fanse have stalked him. "Some of these girl, they scare the ***** out of you."

Frederic Dannen, Hong Kong Babylon (1997)

[mark f]

"We have forsaken the magic of the cinema. We have gotten too far away from the cinematic effects achievable by camera angles and creative editing."

"The most important critic is time."

"You can have all the philosophy you like; if a film doesn't come across in graphic terms, it falls short."

"Realism and naturalism are not for me. I think it's too feeble an instrument."

- Rouben Mamoulain, one of talking pictures' early giants [City Streets, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Love Me Tonight, Queen Christina, The Mark of Zorro (1940)].

[wintertriangles]

"We have forsaken the magic of the cinema. We have gotten too far away from the cinematic effects achievable by camera angles and creative editing."

- Rouben Mamoulain, one of talking pictures' early giants [City Streets, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Love Me Tonight, Queen Christina, The Mark of Zorro (1940)].Funny how they thought that even back then, I wonder where we are now.

[mark f]

"It is a pity when one, either through force of circumstance or because one is afraid of being ridiculed by others, won't produce and expose to everyone that little spark of something special which is unique to him alone."

"A critic's typical praise is 'Beautifully understated'. That means beautifully false ... I'd rather go the other way - to gamble rather than play it safe. If I err it's by overstating, but I try to get it right."

"Life is too short to make destructive films about people one doesn't like. My films are meant to be constructive and illuminating."

"I know my films upset people. I want to upset people."

- Ken Russell

[mark f]

"I think there's a vague sense out there that movies are becoming more and more unreal. I know I've felt it."

"We all wake up in the morning wanting to live our lives the way we know we should. But we usually don't, in small ways. That's what makes a character like Batman so fascinating. He plays out our conflicts on a much larger scale."

"Films are subjective - what you like, what you don't like. But the thing for me that is absolutely unifying is the idea that every time I go to the cinema and pay my money and sit down and watch a film go up on-screen, I want to feel that the people who made that film think it's the best movie in the world, that they poured everything into it and they really love it. Whether or not I agree with what they've done, I want that effort there - I want that sincerity, and when you don't feel it, that's the only time I feel like I'm wasting my time at the movies."

- Christopher Nolan

[wintertriangles]

"Life without art is stupid"


I have no idea who said this but I love it

[mark f]

"Being a screenwriter in Hollywood is like being a eunuch at an orgy. Worse, actually, at least the eunuch is allowed to watch."

"I've always felt like I work in a small little area that doesn't represent anything like the rest of society."

"We export films that are full of sleazy [penis] jokes and toilet humor - that's why we've earned the affectionate nickname of the Great Satan. What's seemingly benign, by our standards, is doing more damage to us around the world than anything I could ever do."

"When I die, if the word 'thong' appears in the first or second sentence of my obituary, I've screwed up."

- Albert Brooks

[mark f]

"There is no one who would have me... I can't cook."

"I never said 'I want to be alone.' I only said 'I want to be left alone.' There is a whole world of difference."

"Your joys and sorrows... you can never tell them. You cheapen the inside of yourself if you do. There are some who want to get married and others who don't. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead." (She did leave John Gilbert waiting at the altar in 1927 though.)

"Life would be so wonderful if we only knew what to do with it."

- Greta Garbo

[planet news]

"Life without art is stupid"

I have no idea who said this but I love itNietzsche said "Without music, life would be a mistake".

[wintertriangles]

Don't know about the people,
but all the scarecrows
are crooked.

Kobayashi Issa

[mark f]

"You meet these people who are confident all the time. They annoy me, and I wonder if it's because I'm envious or if it's because they're shallow."

"I always look at films as real stories with real people in real situations. That's why I struggle with the whole notion of calling someone the 'good guy' or the 'bad guy' because I think we all have potential to do good things and all have the potential to do bad things."

"I'm a cat person actually, and my dogs are a lot like cats because they don't bark, they hate water and they climb trees. They are aloof and very feline. I see myself as a cat. I grew up with such an affinity to cats. I adore the way that they think and operate."

- Guy Pearce

[mark f]

"An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last chapter missing."

"Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically - for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist, but then what isn't?"

"Never keep up with the Joneses; drag them down to your level. It's cheaper."

- Quentin Crisp

[Silas]

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

Franklin D Roosevelt

[seamjay]

"One original thought is worth more than a thousand meaningless quotes" - Banksy

[Tacitus]

"I am on a drug. It's called Charlie Sheen. It's not available because if you try it, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body" - Charlie Sheen

Good lad, Charles. Maybe you should get yourself off to bed with a nice cup of hot chocolate?

[honeykid]

He's seriously ill, isn't he? :(

[mark f]

"I have learned more about love, selflessness and human understanding from the people I have met in this great adventure in the world of AIDS than I ever did in the cutthroat, competitive world in which I spent my life."

"The violence in the Psycho movies is born out of plot, passion and character... Don't just dispatch people by six to the reel and say it's entertainment. The real secret of Psycho is that it's a tragedy first and a horror movie second."

[Part of his last letter, given to his sons after his death] "Boys, don't try to find a woman as wonderful as your mother to marry because if you do, you'll stay single your whole lives."

- Anthony Perkins

[wintertriangles]

"I am on a drug. It's called Charlie Sheen. It's not available because if you try it, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body" - Charlie Sheen

Good lad, Charles. Maybe you should get yourself off to bed with a nice cup of hot chocolate?
Oh woe is me too...

[mark f]

"Live like you'll die tomorrow, work like you don't need the money, and dance like nobody's watching."

"I would never discriminate against someone's talent because they showed the poor taste to like me."

"If you think you can do better, then do better. Don't compete with anyone, just yourself. When you are in trouble or have a dilemma, ask yourself, "What's the important thing?" And when you wake up in the morning, ask yourself how you can be a better person, not just a better performer."

- Bob Fosse

[chipper]

Women fake orgasms but men fake an entire relationship

[mark f]

"All of life's questions and answers are in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It's about greed and ambition and paranoia and looking at the worst parts of yourself. When I was writing There Will Be Blood, I would put The Treasure of the Sierra Madre on before I went to bed at night, just to fall asleep to it."

"We're all children of Kubrick, aren't we? Is there anything you can do that he hasn't done?"

"Oh how I hate it when directors are supposed to explain their films. I only say this much [about Magnolia]: If I had had more cash, I would have let it rain cats and dogs."

- Paul Thomas Anderson

[Silas]

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

Evelyn Beatrice Hall

[Justin]

“I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.”

- Samuel Beckett

[mark f]

"My mother says I didn't open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked."

"Success is a great deodorant. It takes away all your past smells."

"Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses."

"One problem with people who have no vices is that they're pretty sure to have some annoying virtues."

- Elizabeth Taylor (R.I.P.)

[honeykid]

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.
Epictetus

[mark f]

"Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them."

"In the frivolous, absurd old days, stars were photographed in their bubble baths; now they bathe in tears of self-pity."

"The words "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies."

- Pauline Kael

[mark f]

"All great work is preparing yourself for the accident to happen."

"Kurosawa never affected me directly in terms of my own movie-making because I never would have presumed that I was capable of that perception and that vision."

"All I want to do is get better and quantity can help me to solve my problems. I'm thrilled by the idea that I'm not even sure how many films I've done. If I don't have a script I adore, I do one I like. If I don't have one I like, I do one that has an actor I like or that presents some technical challenge."

"There's no such thing as a small part. There are just small actors."

- Sidney Lumet, R.I.P.

[Slauter]

Here is the quote of the day..!!
"Nerds don't just happen to dress informally. They do it too consistently. Consciously or not, they dress informally as a prophylactic measure against stupidity."

[mark f]

"I didn't have evil intentions, but I guess I did have power."

"Look for the seams (on a knuckleball) and then hit in-between them."

"Life is precious and time is a key element. Let's make every moment count and help those who have a greater need than our own."

- Harmon Killebrew (Baseball Hall-of-Famer) R.I.P.

[Tacitus]

Ireland is NOT A PLC. (it is a wholly owned subsidiary of its past)

Ciaran O’Kelly

[Brodinski]

Stay disciplined to have everything you want. And still stay disciplined and focused to get more.

- Bernard Hopkins

[honeykid]

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
Anton Chekhov

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Mark Twain

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Friedrich Nietzsche

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
Robert Frost

[CcWings]

When you're chewing on life's gristle
Don't grumble, give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best...
And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life.
Monty Python's Life of Brian

[The Prestige]

"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. And what do you get at the end of it? A death. What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, then you got to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, get laid, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating in warm liquid... and you check out as a gleam in somebody's eye!"

Sean Morey

[Golgot]

How's about some bitchy author-on-author (http://flavorwire.com/188138/the-30-harshest-author-on-author-insults-in-history/2#post_body) action?

“A great cow full of ink.”
~Gustave Flaubert on George Sand

“There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.”
~Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope

“That’s not writing, that’s typing.”
~Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac

“Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
~Mark Twain on Jane Austen (1898)

[Godoggo]

"Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think." ~Emma Goldman

[honeykid]

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
Albert Camus

Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.
Alan Alda

Belief is the death of intelligence.
Robert Anton Wilson

Genius always finds itself a century too early.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Tacitus]

Bit late for the Solstice but:

More people worship the rising than the setting sun - Pompey

[Lennon]

If I were buying a laser gun I'd definitely take the XF-3800 before I took the "Pew Pew Pew Fun Gun."


.

[mark f]

"The truth is that to enjoy acting one must be an exhibitionist at heart; one must revel in those exposures of the emotions which would be agonizing to a shy or reserved person. All the great actors have been and are exhibitionists. It is easy and pleasurable for them to shout, to weep, to tear their hair, to laugh, to make love. They enjoy it and they make their audience enjoy it. They are the ideal actors. As a boy the possibility of being an actor never even occurred to me. Nor could it have occurred to anybody who knew the shy and inarticulate youth that I was. I wanted to write. I felt I could express myself on paper; alone in a room I felt articulate and creative. But I was also lazy, a thing a writer never dare be. Application is, I am convinced, the first rule for authors. Then, mysteriously, a part in a play offered itself at a time when to earn a living was a prime motive of existence. And then another part in another play. And gradually the miracle took place. The metamorphosis of a nervous, inhibited, agoraphobic individual who had other ambitions altogether into a quite successful actor."

- Leslie Howard

[mark f]

"In Europe an actor is an artist. In Hollywood, if he isn't working, he's a bum."

"I never get the girl. I wind up with a country instead."

"I don't see many men today [the 1980s]. I see a lot of guys running around on television with small waists, but I don't see many men.

[On Ingrid Bergman] "I reckon there wasn't a man who came within a mile of her who didn't fall in love with her."

- Anthony Quinn

[under0ath777]

Quote of the Day:

Read my sig..:)

[Tacitus]

For him, Fleet Street was a playground. Now at CNN, he is in his element, having joined a branch of the entertainment industry that masquerades as a form of journalism. It suits him perfectly.

Roy Greenslade on the lovely Piers Morgan. ;)

[BekahRebel]

"You remind me of my husband - except you're not buried in the backyard!" ;)

Random fridge magnet :D

[Mcallums]

One of my best quote...

"On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does."

[mark f]

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

- Oscar Wilde

[Brodinski]

"The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed, a new continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to be released and channeled toward some great good."

Brian Tracy

[sreenathpktr]

"A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble."
-Gandhi

[mark f]

"Love is the best, most insidious, most effective instrument of social repression."

- Rainer Werner Fassbinder

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BRW4gNHvrkk/RhG6XA4dyhI/AAAAAAAAAzo/KHKD9mrkzWc/s400/berlin-alexanderplatz-remastered_06a.jpg

[sreenathpktr]

"The safe way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket."
-Kin Hubbard

[Tacitus]

"Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad."

Brian 'God' O'Driscoll about ex-foe Martin Johnson. Doubt if he came up with it but it's nice to see sportsmen saying things other than 'Obviously' and 'To be fair' in press conferences. ;)

[Godoggo]

I looked it up because that's a great quote. It's from Miles Kington a British journalist.

[Tacitus]

There ya go. :)

I'd be a bit wary about mentioning it around BO'D though. He's a strong lad... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXsnwOwRc2I) ;)

[sreenathpktr]

"Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success."
-Vivekananda

[linespalsy]

The story of Liu Lianren as told by Gavan McCormack in The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence (1996). From the chapter on the debate over war-crimes in Japan post-1945.

"Liu was taken at bayonet point from his Shandong village in 1944 and sent to work in the Showa coal mine in Hokkaido. Unlike those at Hanaoka who rose up in rebellion, he fled into the mountains. He escaped in July 1945, just about one month before the end of the war, but he was so terrified that he remained in hiding, living off grasses and nuts, and occasionally descending to the remote coastline to collect seaweed, less afraid of bears than of human beings, and with no knowledge that the war was over, until he was by chance discovered by a rabbit trapper in 1958. When he emerged, not only was the war over, but Kishi Nobosuke, the Tojo Cabinet's Minister for Commerce and Labor, who had been responsible for the forced-labor program, had become prime minister. When Kishi's government ordered an investigation of Liu on suspicion of illegal entry into the country, Liu published a famous statement of protest and then returned to China. As of the early 1990s, he was still pursuing his case for justice against the Japanese government, and still waiting for a response from it."

[Golgot]

'The things is, Schindler's List is about success, the Holocaust was about failure.'

Terry Gilliam paraphrasing Stanley Kubrick in this vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAKS3rdYTpI), on Hollywood's demand for comforting happy endings (that dodge tough facts, and as a corollary don't prompt post-film discussion etc)

[linespalsy]

In the same vein of artists dumping on other artists, here's Nabokov trashing Sartre's 'Nausea' in the NY Times. I can't decide what the best part is but I like his synopsis so I'll quote it at length:

Whether, from the viewpoint of literature, "La Nausée" was worth translating at all is another question. It belongs to that tense-looking but really very loose type or writing, which has been popularized by many second-raters-Barbusse, Céline and so forth. Somewhere behind looms Dostoevsky at his worst, and still farther back there is old Eugene Sue, to whom the melodramatic Russian owed so much. The book is supposed to be the diary ("Saturday morning," "11.00 P.M." -that sort of dismal thing) of a certain Roquentin, who, after some quite implausible travels, has settled in a town in Normandy to conclude a piece of historical research.

Roquentin shuttles between cafe and public library, runs into a voluble homosexual, meditates, writes his diary and finally has a long and tedious talk with his former wife, who is now kept by a sun-tanned cosmopolitan. Great importance is attached to an American song on the cafe phonograph: "Some of these days you'll miss me, honey." Roquentin would like to be as crisply alive as this song, which "saved the Jew [who wrote it] and the Negress [who sang it]" from being "drowned in existence."

In an equivocal flash of clairvoyance (p. 235) he visualizes the composer as a clean-shaven Brooklynite with "coal-black eyebrows" and "ringed fingers," writing down the tune on the twenty-first floor of a skyscraper. The heat is terrific. Presently, however, Tom (probably a friend) will come in with his hipflask (local color) and they will take swigs of liquor ("brimming glasses of whisky" in Mr. Alexander's lush version). I have taken the trouble to ascertain that in reality the song is a Sophi Tucker one written by the Canadian Shelton Brooks.

The crux of the whole book seems to be the illumination that comes to Roquentin when he discovers that his "nausea" is the result of the pressure of an absurd and amorphous but very tangible world. Unfortunately for the novel, all this remains on a purely mental level, and the discovery might have been of some other nature, say solipsistic, without in the least affecting the rest of the book. When an author inflicts his idle and arbitrary philosophic fancy on a helpless person whom he has invented for that purpose, a lot of talent is needed to have the trick work. One has no special quarrel with Roquentin when he decides that the world exists. But the task to make the world exist as a work of art was beyond Sartre's powers.


And if you read that much, you might as well read the other half HERE (http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nab-r-sartre.html).

[linespalsy]

you must forgive me if I seem to be talking somewhat like a book, but once you're at the university, and find yourself surrounded by a wilderness of printed matter of all sorts, one is apt to fall into their foolish jargon.

-The Golem (Gustav Meyrink, 1914)

[wintertriangles]

"I hope to build a house with my films. Some of them are the cellar, some are the walls, and some are the windows. But I hope in time there will be a house."

— Rainer Werner Fassbinder

[Golgot]

Recollections of Nazi rules on the playing of Jazz in Czechoslovakia (http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/01/josef-skvorecky-on-the-nazis-control-freak-hatred-of-jazz/250837/)...

so-called jazz compositions may contain at most 10% syncopation; the remainder must consist of a natural legato movement devoid of the hysterical rhythmic reverses characteristic of the barbarian races and conductive to dark instincts alien to the German people (so-called riffs);

[Golgot]

But I will not see
great men go down
who walked in rags
from town to town
finding English a necessary sin
the perfect language to sell pigs in.

~Michael Hartnett

*EDIT*

And still on the linguistic front, gotta love that Radio Londres (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Londres) alerted the French Resistance to D-Day kicking off with the phrase...

Blessent mon cœur d'une langeur monotone...

~

[The long sobs of the violins of autumn] wound my heart with a monotonous langour

[mark f]

"You always get a special kick on opening day, no matter how many you go through. You look forward to it like a birthday party when you're a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen."

- Joe DiMaggio

[Vangar]

“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”

Oscar Wilde.

[Tacitus]

I don't like Liam Gallagher. I sh*t bigger than Liam Gallagher

From the bipolar king of dandy post Punk Glam himself, Mr Adam Ant. ;)

contd:

(Gallagher is) too ugly to be in the charts; he’s too stupid to be in the charts; he has no talent – his new group are sh*t

Don't think he likes him. :p

[chipper]

Tyrion Lannister Quotes:

There has never been a slave who did not choose to be a slave, the dwarf reflected. Their choice may be between bondage and death, but the choice is always there.

Let them see that their words can cut you and you’ll never be free of the mockery. If they want to give you a name take it make it your own. Then they can’t hurt you with it anymore.

Never forget who you are, for surely the world won’t. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.

I'm not particularly good at violence, but I'm good at convincing others to do violence for me!

You don't buy whores, you only rent them.

What can a dwarf know of love? My feelings are twice what any man feels. The intensity of an average man’s yet half the space to hold them.

I much like my head. I don't want to see it removed just yet.

A day will come when you think you are safe and happy, and your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth. And you will know the debt is paid.

http://theletters.org/uploads/tyrion-lannister-quotes.jpg

[Slimgee55]

"The chain reaction of evil-wars producing more wars-must be broken or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation"

[moaht]

"Treat those the way you would like to be treated"
This is one of my favorite quotes.

[moaht]

"Either I will find a way, or I will make one"

[Exist]

"First off, let me start by saying that I forgive no one, that I wish you all the fire and ice of hell." Samual Beckett/Malone Dies

[wintertriangles]

Two kind of frighteningly hilarious quotes here, within the same interview nonetheless:

It's a known fact that islam is a religion, judaism is a religion, but christianity is a philosophy, not a religion.

(referring to American Atheists) "You and your group of fascists..."

- Bill O'Reilly

[honeykid]

It's a sad day when you find out that it's not accident or time or fortune, but just yourself that kept things from you.
Lillian Hellman (1905 - 1984)

The beginning is always today.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797 - 1851)

When you have given nothing, ask for nothing.
Albanian Proverb

Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.
Marilyn Ferguson

[Exist]

'Walk quietly and carry a big stick.' - Pres. Teddy

[Tyler1]

"Science does not make it impossible to believe in a God, it just makes it possible not to believe in one." - Steven Weinberg

[ManOf1000Faces]

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself"

-Leo Tolstoy

[Tyler1]

"To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great." - Hegel

[honeykid]

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
Plato

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
Joseph Stalin

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
Milton Friedman

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
John Quincy Adams

[Tyler1]

"A man begins to love life to the point of risking that life to be able to live it" - Che

[honeykid]

Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.
Alan Alda

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.
Ernest Hemingway

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde.
Dolly Parton

[earlsmoviepicks]

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

Epictetus

[mark f]

"I wouldn't piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire."

"[Joan Crawford] has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie."

"You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good ... Joan Crawford is dead. Good."

"Joan Crawford and I have never been warm friends. We are not simpatico. I admire her, and yet I feel uncomfortable with her. To me, she is the personification of the Movie Star. I have always felt her greatest performance is Crawford being Crawford."

- Bette Davis

[Powderfinger]

What's that Film about her Joan Crawford? I realise she beat and tortured her children, though didn't George Bush Jr do that? :p

[donniedarko]

Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease". Disraeli responds, "That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress".

[mark f]

To PF, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

[Powderfinger]

^ Cheers mate

[honeykid]

Work is not always required... there is such a thing as sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.
George McDonald

It's the company, not the cooking, that makes a meal.
Kirby Larson, Hattie Big Sky, 2006

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.
Stephen Jay Gould (1941 - 2002)

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882)

[mark f]

"I believe that sex is the most beautiful, natural and wholesome thing that money can buy."

"What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke."

"And now, I'm pleased to introduce the star of the film Gladiator, and a man I like to call a close, personal friend, but he told me not to... "

"All I've ever wanted was an honest week's pay for an honest day's work."

- Steve Martin

[mark f]

"My dream is of a craftsman's cinema in which the author can express himself as directly as the painter in his paintings or the writer in his books."

"The Western is always the same, which gives the director tremendous freedom."

"The saving grace of the cinema is that with patience and a little love we may arrive at that wonderfully complex creature which is called man."

"A director only makes one film in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again."

"I believe that perfection handicaps cinema."

- Jean Renoir

[honeykid]

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)

Think of life as a giant, fat cat you're in charge of. Sometimes you can control it, but other times, it's going to do what it wants and you have to roll with it. And sometimes you can do everything - everything you're s'posed to do- and it'll still shred all the things you hold dear... The only thing you can really do with life is rub its belly and prepare for the worst.
Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive, 11-07-2011

Living apart and at peace with myself, I came to realize more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain, even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with another's way of life - so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands off!
Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)

The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.
Carl Becker

[mark f]

[attributed last words] "I should never have switched from scotch to martinis."

[on the House Un-American Activities Committee] "They'll nail anyone who ever scratched his ass during the National Anthem."

[about himself] "Democrat in politics, Episcopalian by upbringing, dissenter by disposition."

"Acting is like sex. You either do it and don't talk about it, or you talk about it and don't do it. That's why I'm always suspicious of people who talk too much about either."

- Humphrey Bogart

[honeykid]

"Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows."
David T. Wolf

"There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality."
Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)

"We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems."
John W. Gardner (1912 - 2002)

"The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past."
Robertson Davies, "A Voice from the Attic", 1960

[twisted_state]

“To hell with that. A man goin' fishing with two whores from Portland don't have to take that crap.”
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

[shlomi]

"The awful thing about life is this: Everybody has their own reasons. "

Jean Renoir, 'The Rules of the Game'

[honeykid]

A fool and his money are soon elected.
Will Rogers

Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.
Winston Churchill

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
Noam Chomsky

Politics have no relation to morals.
Niccolo Machiavelli

[mark f]

"The only exercise I take is walking behind the coffins of friends who took exercise."

"The nicest buttocks in the world are in Ireland. Irish women are always carrying water on their heads, and always carrying their husbands home from pubs. Such things are the greatest posture-builders in the world."

- Peter O'Toole

[donniedarko]

"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity"

~George Carlin

[honeykid]

"There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause."
P. J. O'Rourke (1947 - ), Parliament of Whores (1991)

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

"The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces."
Maureen Murphy

"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways."
Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970), Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 9

[mark f]

"Movie directing is the perfect refuge for the mediocre."

- Orson Welles

[honeykid]

One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.
Paulo Coelho

Creativity takes courage.
Henri Matisse

The only normal people are the one's you don't know very well.
Alfred Adler

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
Tallulah Bankhead

[earlsmoviepicks]

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."

Mr. Rodgers

[donniedarko]

"Habit is either the best of the servants or the worst of masters" ~Nathaniel Emmons

[shlomi]

"the idea that a person who loves, or alternatively hate some piece of art should create a complete structure of claims and arguments to somehow legitimize his opinion - is no less then dangerous to our community."

[mark f]

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

- Mark Twain

[Tyler1]

"The writer's joy is the thought that can become emotion, the emotion that can wholly become a thought."

- Thomas Mann

[honeykid]

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how…We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
Agnes de Mille (1909 - 1993)

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead (1901 - 1978)

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
Edward R. Murrow (1908 - 1965), television broadcast, December 31, 1955

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.
Bessie A. Stanley

[mark f]

"I believe that God felt sorry for actors, so he created Hollywood to give them a place in the sun and a swimming pool. The price they had to pay was to surrender their talent."

"Actors and burglars work better at night."

"I can't act. I have never acted. And I shall never act. What I can do is suspend my audience's power of judgment till I've finished."

- Sir Cedric Hardwicke

[Mr Minio]

"I'd do it, but I am too lazy!" - Me

[mark f]

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying."

"I'm not afraid of dying... I just don't want to be there when it happens."

[In 1977] "This year I'm a star, but what will I be next year? A black hole?"

- Woody Allen

[Hit Girl]

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else. ~Judy Garland

[kiddo741]

"Don’t be afraid to change…You may lose something good, but you may gain something better. Photoshop your life; Touch up the edges, adjust the tones, blur out the background, focus on you, and crop people out. Thank the people that walked in to your life and made it better. And give thanks to the ones who walked out and made it amazing."

There are a lot of high-pitching quotes these days - in FB for ex. Do they help - this is the question.

[Reidy]

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”― Oscar Wilde

[Hit Girl]

Do a little more each day than you think you can. - Lowell Thomas

[honeykid]

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.
Truman Capote (1924 - 1984)

Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm.
Malayan Proverb

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

[Sexy Celebrity]

My Mother said the other day - some Doctor "I have never seen so much brain injury in the CT scan with a patient which can still walk and talk". That's God mate.- Powderfinger (11/14/2013 - Australia)

[earlsmoviepicks]

"I'm trying to think but nothing happens!" -- Curly

[Nostromo87]

'if at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it'
~Einstein

[StickyShoes]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

— Arthur C. Clarke

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

"Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

[honeykid]

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
Lenin (1870 - 1924)

If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.
Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898)

One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Persuasion, 1818

To be amused by what you read--that is the great spring of happy quotations.
C. E. Montague, "A Writer's Notes on His Trade"

[Godoggo]

"I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you."
~Frida Kahlo

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

Socrates.-- If all goes well, the time will come when one will take up the memorabilia of Socrates rather than the Bible as a guide to morals and reason... The pathways of the most various philosophical modes of life lead back to him... Socrates excels the founder of Christianity in being able to be serious cheerfully and in possessing that wisdom full of roguishness that constitutes the finest state of the human soul. And he also possessed the finer intellect.

from Nietzsche's The Wanderer and his Shadows

[mark f]

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."

"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

- John F. Kennedy

[linespalsy]

"on one occasion an actor called Ratchford, playing a marine, was run through by a real sword left out by accident by the prop man. His death throes received particular applause by an unknowing audience."

Mr. Bligh's Bad Language, by Greg Dening (referring to a 1789 production of the French ballet, The Death of Captain Cook).

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

"Load the spaceship with the rocket fuel, load it with the Warriors. With the command of my voice I raise the level of the Warriors to one that can’t be reproduced. Dig your claws into my organs, scratch into my tendons, bury your anchors into my bones, for the power of the Warrior will always prevaaaaaiiiiiilllll."

--The Ultimate Warrior, WWF Wrestler

[The Marb]

Firstly some JFK quotes to celebrate his life...
Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnfkenn139147.html#r04agZYSzTsuHZrO.99

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.
John F. Kennedy (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_f_kennedy.html)

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnfkenn139147.html#r04agZYSzTsuHZrO.99
'do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men'Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.
John F. Kennedy (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_f_kennedy.html)

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnfkenn139147.html#r04agZYSzTsuHZrO.99


'So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal.'

Plus if i may post this....beautiful speech from Sagan (sorry about size of image)
http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/skyimage/pbdwords.jpg

[wintertriangles]

Erik Satie:

“You do know that I visited Debussy quite often; I admire him immensely and he seems to think much of whatever talent I may have. Nevertheless, one day when I showed him a piece I had just composed he remarked, ‘Satie, you never had two greater admirers than Ravel and myself; many of your early works had an influence on our writing....You have some kind of genius, or you have genius, period. Now as a true friend, I may warn you that from time to time there is in your art a certain lack of form...’ All I did,” added Satie, “was to write Morceaux en forme de poire. I brought them to Debussy who asked, ‘Why such a title?’ Why? Simply, mon cher ami, because you cannot criticize my Pieces in the shape of a pear. If they are en forme de poire they cannot be shapeless.”

[cinemaafficionado]

Just curious Winter, did you get the Avatar idea from the same name movie or is this a current reflection of general:p attitude?

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

Remorse -- Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.


from Nietzsche's The Wanderer and his Shadows

[mark f]

“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”

― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think its forever.”


― Dr. Carl Sagan

[honeykid]

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.
Robertson Davies, "A Voice from the Attic", 1960

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)

[Hit Girl]

“You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female’.”

- Erin McKean

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

O, Thomas, will a Race one day stand really tall
Across the Void, across the Universe and all?
And, measure out with rocket fire,
At last put Adam’s finger forth
As on the Sistine Ceiling,
And God’s great hand come down the other way
To measure Man and find him Good,
And Gift him with Forever’s Day?
I work for that.
Short man. Large dream. I send my rockets forth
between my ears,
Hoping an inch of Will is worth a pound of years.
Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal Mall:
We’ve reached Alpha Centauri!
We’re tall, O God, we’re tall!


--- If Only We Had Taller Been, by Ray Bradbury

[Hit Girl]

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

[banddrag]

"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."

- Murphy's Law.

[honeykid]

America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there.
Laurence J. Peter (1919 - 1988)

As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.
Publilius Syrus (~100 BC), Moral Sayings, First Century B.C.

Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
Quentin Crisp

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
Paul Dirac (1902 - 1984)

[Sexy Celebrity]

"AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

- Me (I'm angry)

[linespalsy]

Simplicity is as slow as a hearse and as long as a last breakfast.

Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

"Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think."

--Arthur Schopenhauer

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

"O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!"

--The Tempest, Act 5, Scene 1

[Godoggo]

:up: to HK for quoting Quentin Crisp one of my favorite persons ever. Here is another:

Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.

Quentin Crisp

[Matteo]

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" - Voltaire

[honeykid]

If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it.
Emerson Pugh

Sometimes the measure of friendship isn't your ability to not harm but your capacity to forgive the things done to you and ask forgiveness for your own mistakes.
Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive Comic, 11-07-05

Silly is you in a natural state, and serious is something you have to do until you can get silly again.
Mike Myers

Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.
Robert Anton Wilson

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

"My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!"

Marquis de Sade

[Hit Girl]

Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes. - Jim Carrey

[honeykid]

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.
Don Marquis (1878 - 1937)

A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
Fred Allen (1894 - 1956)

The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)

Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.
Dr. Joyce Brothers (1928 - )

[Mr Minio]

Silly is you in a natural state, and serious is something you have to do until you can get silly again.
Mike Myers http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100214003839/villains/images/9/93/Michaelmyers2.jpg
It took me way too much time to realise that Michael =! Mike

[Matteo]

"If you want the rainbow, you gotta' put up with the rain. You know which "philosopher" said that? Dolly Parton. And people think she is just a big pair of t!ts!" - David Brent

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dd/David_Brent_111.jpg

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

"In fact, you know, the best thing I ever did was get thrown out by my wife! She's living with a fitness instructor. He drinks that yellow stuff in tins. He's an idiot" - Alan Partridge

http://www.suchsmallportions.com/sites/default/files/images/Alan-partridge.jpg

[Hit Girl]

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. - J.B.S. Haldane

[honeykid]

My Karma ran over your dogma.
Unknown

When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983)

Do not condemn the judgement of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong.
Dandemis

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Susan Ertz, Anger in the Sky

Wanting to be someone you're not is a waste of the person you are.
Kurt Cobain (1967 - 1994)

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859 - 1927)

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

I remember my mother when she was dyin', looked all shrunk up and gray. I asked her if she was afraid. She just shook her head. I was afraid to touch the death I seen in her. I couldn't find nothin' beautiful or uplifting about her goin' back to God. I heard of people talk about immortality, but I ain't seen it.

I wondered how it'd be like when I died, what it'd be like to know this breath now was the last one you was ever gonna draw. I just hope I can meet it the same way she did, with the same... calm. 'Cause that's where it's hidden - the immortality I hadn't seen.


--Private Witt, The Thin Red Line

[Hit Girl]

To be great is to be misunderstood. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

[babu]

Nice thread :)


"Failure is not the worst thing in the world, the very worst is not to try."

"Where other men blindly follow the truth remember Nothing is True. Where other men are limited by morality or law, remember Everything is Permitted."

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

"Children are the boldest philosophers. They enter life naked, not covered by the smallest fig leaf of dogma, absolutes, creeds. This is why every question they ask is so absurdly naïve and so frighteningly complex."

--YEVGENY ZAMYATIN.

[Hit Girl]

“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn't try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn't need others' approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.”

- Laozi

[babu]

"Don't take life too seriously; no one gets out alive anyway"

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up
being governed by your inferiors." - Plato

[babu]

“Words do not express thoughts very well. they always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.” -Hermann Hesse


"patriotism is a virtue of the vicious" -Oscar Wilde

[Hit Girl]

“Happiness is a warm puppy.” ― Charles M. Schulz (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/209672.Charles_M_Schulz)

http://cutestuff.co/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/golden-retriever-puppy-snuggling-toy.jpg

[eMilee]

Fitness - if it came in a bottle, everybody would have a great body. ~Cher


--just did my workout finally! lol

[honeykid]

It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.
Alec Bourne

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.
Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988)

I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
Joe Walsh

Seeing a murder on television... can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899 - 1980)

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

- Philip K. Dick

[babu]

The past is a puzzle, like a broken mirror. As you piece it together, you cut yourself, your image keeps shifting. And you change with it. It could destroy you, drive you mad. It could set you free.

"It takes nothing to join the crowd. It takes everything to stand alone."

"Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart."

“Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

[Mesmerized]

“Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?”

― G.K. Chesterton

[linespalsy]

Neary’s conception of friendship was very curious. He expected it to last. He never said, when speaking of an enemy: “He used to be a friend of mine”, but always, with affected precision: “I used to think he was a friend of mine.”

Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

They fail to realize that 99.9 per cent of people with a healthy diet will eventually die.

Mark E. Smith, Renegade (2008)

[babu]

"To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” -Aristotle

"Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead." -Clausewitz

"The past lies like a nightmare upon the present." -Karl Marx

“If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.” -Paul McCartney

[honeykid]

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
Thomas A. Edison (1847 - 1931)

There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.
P. J. O'Rourke (1947 - ), Parliament of Whores (1991)

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950), Letters

A great marriage is not when the 'perfect couple' comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.
Dave Meurer, "Daze of Our Wives"

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.
Stephen Jay Gould (1941 - 2002)

[Hit Girl]

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
― Niels Bohr (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/821936.Niels_Bohr)

[VFN]

Fish discover water last - Proverb

[Mesmerized]

"The moral gravity of procured abortion is apparent in all its truth if we recognize that we are dealing with murder and, in particular, when we consider the specific elements involved. The one eliminated is a human being at the very beginning of life. No one more absolutely innocent could be imagined. In no way could this human being ever be considered an aggressor, much less an unjust aggressor! He or she is weak, defenceless, even to the point of lacking that minimal form of defence consisting in the poignant power of a newborn baby's cries and tears. The unborn child is totally entrusted to the protection and care of the woman carrying him or her in the womb. And yet sometimes it is precisely the mother herself who makes the decision and asks for the child to be eliminated, and who then goes about having it done."

~ Pope John Paul II

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

"There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there."

--- Patrick Bateman, American Psycho

[Mesmerized]

“It seems to me as clear as daylight that abortion would be a crime.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

[honeykid]

Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.
Henry Van Dyke

We are always the same age inside.
Gertrude Stein (1874 - 1946)

It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.
Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

[The Sci-Fi Slob]

"I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other."
Napoleon Bonaparte

"If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles."
Carl von Clausewitz

"Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice."
Adolf Hitler

[Mesmerized]

“More than a decade ago, a Supreme Court decision literally wiped off the books of fifty states statutes protecting the rights of unborn children. Abortion on demand now takes the lives of up to 1.5 million unborn children a year. Human life legislation ending this tragedy will some day pass the Congress, and you and I must never rest until it does. Unless and until it can be proven that the unborn child is not a living entity, then its right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be protected.”

― Ronald Reagan

[Hit Girl]

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. - Albert Einstein