"In real life as in grand opera, arias only make hopeless situations worse."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Timequake)

"I will not abide another toe."
— The Big Lebowski

"Alvin, I told you find your roots, but who told you to drink the water?"
— Mourner at the airport in Love at First Bite

"Cracker Barrel? Aptly named."
— Angelina

"You can't just go down on one person and not another. I paid good money and expected to eaten out!"
— Samantha Jones

"Hey, I'm not getting a science lecture from a man doing crop rotation on his forehead."
— Miranda Hobbs, Esq.

"I could talk about industrialization and men's fashion all day, but work must intrude."
— Hans Gruber

"When Alexander saw the depth of his empire he wept for there were no more worlds to concquer. Benefits of a classical education."
— Hans Gruber

"Look after Mr. Bond and see that some harm come to him."
— Hugo Drax, Meglomaniac and Space Enthusiast.

"I fry mine in butter!"
— Kurt Vonnegut

"I really believe that if I were not a writer, not a creator, not an experimenter, I might have been a very faithful wife. I think highly of faithfulness. But my temperament belongs to the writer, not to the woman"
— Anaïs Nin

"I wanted to walk away in denial, watch the news and believe the cat was faking the whole thing for attention."
— Erika Lopez

"I / I am a girl who feels too American for love...they say I'm a child of an AT&T café olé telephone-commercial future where your nose is not flat enough to offend/and not pointy enough to cut the glass ceiling. "
— Erika Lopez

"Really, I want to get this individualistic-thing down. I want to walk across the football field alone without looking like the last one picked to play soccer. I never was a cheerleader, I was a slut on my own with the thinking that if a tree has a good time and no one's around to hear it, it's not a slut. But sometimes you do need another tree around to double-dare you, or else you might end up doing nothing but watching TV when no one's around. "
— Erika Lopez

"I am an exceptional thief, Mrs. McClane. And since I'm moving up to kidnapping, you should be more polite."
— Hans Gruber

"Scientists are saying the future is going to be far more futuristic than they previously predicted"
— Sarah Michelle Geller in Southland Tales

"Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in."
— Alan Alda

"Sure the bible might be the greatest story ever told, but the most popular story is about a couple who has a good time fornicating, but then stops for one reason or another while it is still a novelty. "
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Oh, you know I really am fascinated by aviation. I never knew they did it all with rubber bands"
— Auntie Mame

"You wanna talk some jive? I'll talk some jive. I'll talk some jive like you've never heard! "
— Royal

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Say what you will about the south, but in North Carolina a hot dog is free to swing anyway it wishes."
— David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)

"I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me."
— Woody Allen (Annie Hall)

"I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
— Mark Twain

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
— Hunter S. Thompson

"We can't stop here, this is bat country!"
— Hunter S. Thompson

"Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television."
— Woody Allen

"And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

"Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'"
— Kurt Vonnegut (Timequake)

"If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way to make life more bearable."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

"Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. "
— James Baldwin

"Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black."
— James Baldwin

"Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. "
— James Baldwin

"If you're looking for sympathy you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary."
— David Sedaris (Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays)

"After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations. "
— David Sedaris

"A week after my drugs ran out, I left my bed to perform at the college, deciding at the last minute to skip both the doughnut toss and the march of the headless plush toys. Instead, I just heated up a skillet of plastic soldiers, poured a milkshake over my head and called it a night."
— David Sedaris

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."
— Anaïs Nin

"There are two ways to reach me: by way of kisses or by way of the imagination. But there is a hierarchy: the kisses alone don't work."
— Anaïs Nin (Henry and June)

"If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it."
— Anaïs Nin

"You're not Catholic and you took communion? If my God wins you're screwed."
— Det. Frank Pembleton

"I want the paperwork on that double-suicide. I don't care if it's in rhyming couplets. I want it finished.
"
— Lt. Al "Gee" Giardello

"Quick, lock the door. Someone might walk in with a case we can win"
— DA Adam Schiff

"Kellerman, we do not wear jeans in my squadroom. Pants, trousers, Nino Cerutti if you're feeling fabulous."
— Lt. Al "Gee" Giardello

"The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal."
— H.L. Mencken

"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin."
— H.L. Mencken

"If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl."
— H.L. Mencken

"It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart."
— Saul Bellow

"...the grass actually IS greener on the other side, but it's only because of the bodies buried there."
— Robert Ford