Joel > Joel's Quotes

“Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. ”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

“In one of his puckish moods Saul talked the president of a university into letting him anonymously take an examination being administered to candidates for a doctorate in community organization. "Three of the questions were on the philosophy of and motivations of Saul Alinsky," writes Saul. "I answered two of them incorrectly.”
― Nicholas von Hoffman, Radical: A Portrait of Saul Alinsky

“Grades are a problem. On the most general level, they're an explicit acknowledgment that what you're doing is insufficiently interesting or rewarding for you to do it on your own. Nobody ever gave you a grade for learning how to play, how to ride a bicycle, or how to kiss. One of the best ways to destroy love for any of these activities would be through the use of grades, and the coercion and judgment they represent. Grades are a cudgel to bludgeon the unwilling into doing what they don't want to do, an important instrument in inculcating children into a lifelong subservience to whatever authority happens to be thrust over them.”
― Derrick Jensen

“I tell ya, I know I’m ugly. My proctologist stuck his finger in my mouth.”
― Rodney Dangerfield, It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect but Plenty of Sex and Drugs

“This is from an Indian comedian named Charlie Hill: “They say Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean. My people were living here for hundreds and hundreds of years. We never noticed it? “One day the chief took his son to the top of a mountain. As they looked out over the hills and valleys, he spread his arms wide and said, ‘Son, someday none of this will be yours.”
― Rodney Dangerfield, It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect but Plenty of Sex and Drugs

“I mean, I’m not a kid anymore. I could go tomorrow. And I hope I go tomorrow. I haven’t gone today yet.”
― Rodney Dangerfield, It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect but Plenty of Sex and Drugs

“This is how a great short piece of comedy works: The reader feels as though the writer is taking them on a leisurely stroll along a simple garden path, parasol in hand, and in a careful and measured way, pointing out all the funny and wonderful things in this hilarious comedy world. Showing them too much, or veering off the path by introducing concepts unrelated to your title, or racing through, introducing hard-to-understand concepts too quickly, you’ll give the reader more than they bargained for. They’ll get scared and abandon the journey.”
― Scott Dikkers, How to Write Funnier: Book Two of Your Serious Step-by-Step Blueprint for Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing

“So that’s what Fulcrum training does to you. You learn to think of orogeny as a matter of effort, when it’s really… perspective. And perception.” An Allia-shaped trauma tells you why the Fulcrum wouldn’t have wanted every two-shard feral reaching for any obelisks nearby. But you spend a moment trying to understand the distinction he’s explaining. It’s true that using energy is something entirely different from using magic. The Fulcrum’s method makes orogeny feel like what it is: straining to shove around heavy objects, just with will instead of hands or levers. Magic, though, feels effortless—at least while one is using it. The exhaustion comes later. In the moment, though, it is simply about knowing it’s there. Training yourself to see it.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate

“Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.”
― Sophia Loren