The only time I felt like I was talkin’ to God,
Was in my Walkman walking with Nas.
— Macklemore, “Church (feat. Geo of Blue Scholars)"
I will not be a mannequin.
— Macklemore, “And We Danced (feat. Ziggy Stardust)”
Ooh, She started dancin’ to that fine fine music.
— Velvet Underground, “Rock and Roll”
It was, they realized, when man has not only altogether forgotten but has firmly renounced all ideas of food and drink that he eats and drinks in the right spirit.
— Isak Dinesen, Babette’s Feast
Reducing the number of relationships.
— Jason
They spoke of spontaneous combustion with contempt, and implied they were the boys to put out combustions. Somehow we all felt as though we each had inherited a large fortune.
— Joseph Conrad, Youth
I’ll say as they say and persevere so,
And in this mist at all adventures go.
— Antipholus of Syracuse, A Comedy of Errors
The story of the fact is: happy wife, happy life.
— Man in Cobble Hill movie theater after Now You See Me
And for a moment, the logic of that seemed to make him more peaceful.
— Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius
I hope scholars in the future will solve this problem so that the more profound aspects of our religion can be communicated in English.
— Gejyong Tenzin Gyatsho (The Dali Lama), An Introduction to Buddhism
You don’t have to be as good as everyone else if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.
— Neil Gaiman, Neil Gaiman’s ‘Make Good Art’ speech.
We did our best, both of us, to understand, to explain.
— Samuel Beckett, “The Expelled”
Where’s the Jonny Quest guy?
— Judy’s Dad
Look at the night.
— Neil Diamond, “Sweet Caroline"
Now it understood what the man sought in the woman, and it knew that he suffered because he never would attain that sense of completion he sought.
— Paul Bowles, “The Circular Valley”
I’m fairly certain that, after a shortish time, the person through whom a poem was written is no more entitled to make revisions than any other reader.
— Paul Muldoon, Paul Muldoon Poems 1968-1998
He remembered a paper he’d once given at a conference on urban design: It is not from the château that we set upon our adventure, gentlemen, but from the shack.
— Italo Calvino, The Queen’s Necklace
The term skeuomorph (pronounced skyoo-uh-morf) refers to an element in an object’s design that’s no longer functionally necessary but has been retained anyway for ornamental purposes.
— Lev Grossman, “Flatland: Should the virtual world try to look like the real one?,” TIME: June 3, 2013
The book I remember most clearly was A Wrinkle in Time.
— Dan Brown, TIME: May 27, 2013
I just washed my hands
Then I went for my dinner.
— The Proclaimers, “Over And Done With”