Alex > Alex's Quotes

“Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.”
― e.e. cummings

“Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.”
― Carl Sandburg

“The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor. ”
― Willa Cather

“Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.”
― James Thurber

“I'm either going to be a writer or a bum.”
― Carl Sandburg

“Well, basically there are two sorts of opera," said Nanny, who also had the true witch's ability to be confidently expert on the basis of no experience whatsoever. "There's your heavy opera, where basically people sing foreign and it goes like "Oh oh oh, I am dyin', oh I am dyin', oh oh oh, that's what I'm doin'", and there's your light opera, where they sing in foreign and it basically goes "Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! I like to drink lots of beer!", although sometimes they drink champagne instead. That's basically all of opera, reely.”
― Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

“He'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.”
― Terry Pratchett, Snuff

“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“The multinational is in the position of the bank robber in the old West; all he has to do is ride straight and hard to be safe, because the posse can’t cross the border. We have taken over the roles that nations recently held; we wage war, collect taxes through debt service, protect our areas of property and the worker/citizens within those areas, and we distribute power as we see fit.”

Think of it this way. I am the baron. Templar international and Margrave Corporation and Avalon State Bank and so on are the castles I have built in different parts of my territory, for defense and expansion. The subsidiary companies we’ve bought or merged with owe their allegiance not to America but to Margrave. We reward loyalty and punish disloyalty. When necessary, we can protect our most important people from the laws of the state, just as the earlier barons could protect their most important vassal knights from the laws of the Catholic Church. The work force is tied to us by profit-sharing and pension plans. I don’t expect national governments to disappear, any more than the British or Dutch royal families have disappeared, but they will become increasingly irrelevant pageants. More and more, actors will play the parts of politicians and statesmen, while the real work goes on elsewhere.”
― Donald E. Westlake, Good Behavior

“After a summer as jam-packed with incident as Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, the fall and winter of 1967 passed with placid serenity on the island of Anguilla, as free from action as a Saul Bellow novel.”
― Donald E. Westlake, Under an English Heaven

“What the Trinidad Guardian had in 1967 called “the most empty diplomatic threat in history” had now become a reality. Two months after British economic aid to Anguilla had stopped because of the end of the Interim Agreement, the British decided to stop all economic aid.”
― Donald E. Westlake

“She was about to write a polite refusal, when she remembered the day on which the fourth form had discovered her christened name to be Laetitia; a shame that Lucy had spent her life concealing, the fourth form had excelled themselves, and Lucy had been wondering whether her mother would mind very much about her suicide, and deciding that anyhow she had brought it on herself by giving her daughter such a high-falutin name. And then Henrietta had waded into the humourists, literally and metaphorically. Her blistering comment had withered humour at the root, so that the word Laetitia had never been heard again, and Lucy had gone home and enjoyed jam roly-poly instead of throwing herself in the river.”
― Josephine Tey, Miss Pym Disposes

“Which reminded her to wonder where Alan was nowadays; there had been several weeks, one spring, when she had thought quite seriously of accepting Alan, in spite of his Adam's apple. It would be nice, she had thought, to be cherished for a change. What had stopped her was the realisation that the cherishing would have to be mutual. That she would inevitably have to mend socks, for instance. She didn't like feet. Even Alan's.”
― Josephine Tey, Miss Pym Disposes

“The Internal Revenue man frowned across the desk at Grofield, apparently trying to work out some sort of problem he was having. Finally he said, "If you lose so much money every year, how do you live?"
"God knows," Grofield said.
"How do you go on opening the theater every summer?"
"Stupidity," Grofield said.
The Internal Revenue man made an impatient gesture. "That isn't an answer," he said.
"Of course it is," Grofield said. "Almost always."
"You must have a source of income," the Internal Revenue man said.
"I couldn't agree more," Grofield said. "In fact, I'd say it's imperative.”
― Richard Stark, Butcher's Moon