Idolatry is worship of round things… flat things are not representational enough.
— Martha Himmelfarb
We introduce
ourselves +
To Planets and
to Flowers
But with
ourselves
Have Etiquettes
Embarrassments
And awes
— Emily Dickinson, “A146,” The Gorgeous Nothings
Pay no attention to the woman behind the video projector.
— Keith Sanborn
We take everything it does too personally.
— Lily
The green blade rises.
— “Now the Green Blade Rises”
She was later found dead, floating in the sea.
— Christopher Drew and Jad Mouawad, “Breaking Proud Tradition, Captains Flee and Let Others Go Down With Ship,” The New York Times
I understand you’re a neurosurgeon.
— Dr. Peter Flynn, Rushmore
May I inquire discreetly?
— The Beatles, “Lovely Rita”
It doesn’t make sense to incorporate that unless it really happened.
— AnneMarie Luijendijk
It’s ketchup.
— Lily
One of our main sources of papyri are ancient trash heaps.
— AnneMarie Luijendijk
Of course.
— Akshay
Is it in the head or between your sides?
— Andrew Bird, “Dark Matter”
Imagine that this wall is not something below you but … behind you. You aren’t lying down anymore; you simply have your back pressed against something.
— Adam Frank, “How To Fall Forever Into The Night Sky,” All Things Considered, NPR
Bug is bug.
— Lily
But, Sir, with respect, she’s a vastly heavier ship. She’s out of our class. She could be halfway to Cape Horn by the time we’re repaired and under way.
— Sailing Master John Allen, Master and Commander
The basic particle of light, a photon, is born traveling at the speed of light, as it emerges from an atom or a molecule. A photon never knows any other speed, and we have not found another phenomenon that accelerates from zero to top speed instantaneously.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, “Hiding in the Light,” Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
By acting like a man in love, he became a man in love again.
— Le mari, “Bastille," Paris, je t'aime
Benjamin is trying to tell us, in his report from the heart of the revolution, that commodities in their profusion and artful presentation can be valued as something other than commodities.
— Dean MacCannel, “The Tourist in the Urban Symbolic,” The Ethics of Sightseeing
I think that’s a fair assessment.
— Donald Rumsfeld, The Unknown Known