Beth

“All progress, ultimately, is the result of playing with ideas and seeing new ways of connecting existing knowledge in such a way that the sum is greater than its constituent parts. And making such unlikely connections is the essence of punning. Without learning to pun, we might just take speech at face value and wouldn't necessarily learn to hunt for deeper, different or related meanings.”
― John Pollack, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics

“Language, be it remembered, is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Its final decisions are made by the masses, people nearest the concrete, having most to do with actual land and sea. It permeates us all, the past as well as the present, and is the grandest triumph of the human intellect. —Walt Whitman”
― John Pollack, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics

“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“I’ve always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn’t? What if it is built on insanity?”
― Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry