“If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.”
“I'll tell you a little secret about the Blues: it's not enough to know which notes to play, you have to know why they need to be played.”
“Griddle cakes, pancakes, hot cakes, flapjacks: why are there four names for grilled batter and only one word for love?”
“Most people with low self-esteem have earned it.”
“Did you ever eat a whole box of cookies right in a row? Did you ever do that? I don't mean take them into your bedroom or something. I mean open them right up in the kitchen as soon as you get home from the store and eat 'em while you're standing there? Just stare at the toaster while you're eatin' a whole goddamn box of cookies?”
“A cat will blink when struck with a hammer.”
“All music is the blues. All of it.”
“I don’t understand this notion of ethnic pride. “Proud to be Irish,” “Puerto Rican pride,” “Black pride.” It seems to me that pride should be reserved for accomplishments; things you attain or achieve, not things that happen to you by chance. Being Irish isn’t a skill; it’s genetic. You wouldn’t say, “I’m proud to have brown hair,” or “I’m proud to be short and stocky.” So why the fuck should you say you’re proud to be Irish? I’m Irish, but I’m not particularly proud of it. Just glad! Goddamn glad to be Irish!”
“These are the kinds of thoughts that made it necessary to separate me from the other kids at school.”
“If free trade can really turn all these Third World countries into thriving economies full of entrepreneurs and investors, who’s gonna clean the fuckin’ toilets around here?”
“Every sixty seconds, thirty acres of rain forest are destroyed in order to raise beef for fast-food restaurants that sell it to people, giving them strokes and heart attacks, which raise medical costs and insurance rates, providing insurance companies with more money to invest in large corporations that branch out further into the Third World so they can destroy more rain forests.”
“Maybe,” he says slowly, as if each word is an effort, “she took advantage of me.”
“We've learnt to appreciate and respect and love someone who's different from us. It is very easy to accept and love those who are like us, but to love someone different is very hard, and you helped us to do that.”
“The biggest mistake made by German commanders was to have underestimated ‘Ivan’, the ordinary Red Army soldier. They quickly found that surrounded or outnumbered Soviet soldiers went on fighting when their counterparts from western armies would have surrendered.”
“Then why are you smiling?” “Because,” she said, “bad ideas are my favorite kind.”
“Poisonous people do not deserve your time. To think otherwise is masochistic.”
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