"Welcome to Hell. Here's your accordion."
— Gary Larson (The Complete Far Side 1980-1994)

"Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole."
— William S. Burroughs

"Invisible things are the only realities."
— Edgar Allan Poe (Loss of Breath)

"I know all those words, but that sentence makes no sense to me."
— Matt Groening

"If they projected the fact that they are dangerous any harder, there would be little puddles of "danger" on the floor around them. Look, it's "danger", don't step in it!"
— Mercedes Lackey (The Eagle & the Nightingales)

"Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health."
— Edgar Allan Poe (Never Bet the Devil Your Head)

"Some men are born sodomites, some achieve sodomy, and some have sodomy thrust upon them..."
— Aleister Crowley (The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz)

"I was trying to have an insight, and all I could think of was that I'd backed myself into a corner, and the corner was me."
— John Welter (Night of the Avenging Blowfish: A Novel of Covert Operations, Love, and Luncheon Meat)

"Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? Or, having it, is satisfied? Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out."
— William Makepeace Thackeray

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout."
— Jonathan Swift

"Just for a while": Death's opening chat-up line in His great seduction, before he drugged you with soporific comforts, distracted you with minor luxuries and ensnared you with long-term payment plans. Join the Rat Race "just for a while." Concentrate on your career "just for a while." Move in with your girlfriend "just for a while." Find a bigger place, out in the burbs "just for a while." Lie down in that wooden box "just for a while."
— Christopher Brookmyre (A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away)

"The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret. [Fred. Free.]"
— Terry Pratchett (The Truth)

""Clever is when one is crafty enough to mistake your imagination for intelligence. Smart is when one assumes they are too educated to notice the difference.""
— Kerry E. Wagner

""It is proved...that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.""
— Voltaire (Pangloss)

"The universe is a million billion light-years wide, and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. This is the position of the universe with regards to human life."
— Martin Amis

"You're arguing in a circle," I said. "In a spiral," said Lamiel, "which is the best way to argue."
— Harry Blamires

""Oh well," McWatt sang, "what the hell.""
— Joseph Heller

"Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it."
— Lenny Bruce (The Essential Lenny Bruce)

"" An Ass put on a Lion's skin and went
About the foreset with much merriment,
Scaring the foolish beasts by brooks and rocks,
Till at last he tried to scare the Fox. But Reynard, hearing from beneath the mane
That Raucous voice so petulant and vain,
Remarked. O' Ass, I too would run away,
But that I know your old familiar bray'.
That's just the way with asses, just the way.""
— Aesop Hyssop

"The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?"
— William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair)

"They always loved my sense of humor. There used to be a light switch inside one of the nurseries that was a cutout of Jesus putting his arm around two children on each side of him as he towered above them. The switch was ironically located in the spot of where his penis would have been and I was the first to point this out. Everyone thought it was funny until I started singing the childhood church song “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” In fear of being struck by lightning or being involved in a massive pile-up car accident after leaving, their laughing ceased. I still thought it was funny."
— Chase Brooks

"Boggle with sex addicts is up there with go-kart racing with junkies."
— Russell Brand (My Booky Wook)

"Right now, the economy is a whole lot like a fairly good-looking brain-dead chick in a persistent vegetative coma. You can't really wake her up, but there's things she's still good for."
— Cintra Wilson (Caligula for President: Better American Living Through Tyranny)

"It was in this pub he'd learnt that, contrary to the belief of the majority of those laying bets, it is possible to flatten a hundred frogs with a hammer in less than thirty seconds. In short, it was a pub with a reputation. And very slimy walls."
— Tony McGuin (Ordinary World)

"When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony, as men do to a whore."
— Jonathan Swift

"And he gave it for his opinion, 'that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.'"
— Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels)

"Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast."
— Oscar Wilde (Lord Arthur Savile's Crime)

"I have become death, destroyer of the world"
— Oppenheimer

"" You say the papers " have made a great farce " of some of your decisions. I hope that does not mean that they laugh at them, but only they report them stupidly, which is common.""
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (Complete Works Of Oliver Wendell Holmes 13 Volumes))

"" Nothing can be more notorious than the calumnies and invectives with which the wisest measures and most virtuous characters of The United States have been pursued and traduced [By American Newspapers]""
— Thurgood Marshall (Thurgood Marshall: His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions and Reminiscences)

"I'm not scared of death, I just don't want to seek it out."
— Thomas James Higgins

"He has the memory of a convict, the balls of a fireman, and the eyesight of a housebreaker. When there's a crime to fight, Landsman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket. It's like there's a film score playing behind him, heavy on the castanets."
— Michael Chabon (The Yiddish Policemen's Union)

"Even ivory towers need central heating."
— Breyten Breytenbach