Quotation of the Day for July 2, 2014 “I think the deepest sacrifice of those that we ask to go to war is not the possibility that they may die or their colleagues may die, but the sacrifice of their normal unwillingness to kill – and in particular that when they come back we don’t […]
Category: Quotes
The cheese stands alone
Quotation of the Day for June 21, 2014 “A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk’s leap toward immortality.” – Clifton Fadiman
Yep, that’s an accomplishment
I just got back home after being on the road for three weeks. I was in Jordan in the Syrian refugee camps, the United Nations, I was signing books in Norway and in Sweden and in Spain. And I got home, and waiting for me was the board copy of “Chu’s Day,†which they’d just […]
“Débâcle”
Quotation of the Day for January 23, 2012 “‘No accident that _débâcle_ is a French word,’ observed my brother once…. The word _débâcle_ suggests the going-wrong of an elaborately conceived plan: a disaster that somehow leaves the principal parties not only having lost what they were aware that they were risking but much more besides, […]
2012
And so — 2012. As usual Neil Gaiman has the best wish, which has managed to condense thoughts that took me three pages to write for my niece into a few short lines. Well, that’s why Neil gets the big bucks and I don’t, isn’t it? I hope that in this year to come, you […]
We should all stand against it
As usual, someone else has said what I wanted to say about Remembrance Day much better than I could: The Evil That Walks By Night There is an evil that walks by night, stalking a nurse just off the night shift, stomping a gay guy, snapping the crucifix from a headstone. Unchecked and unchallenged, it […]
On the shortness of life
Quotation of the Day for April 12, 2009 “You will hear many men saying: “After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties.” And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan […]
And then you’re all in a less-civilized place
Quotation of the Day for May 30, 2011 “Receiving a tax cut is like standing up at a concert in order to get a better view. It’s easy enough to see why an individual might be tempted. But if everyone does it, the gains become much less clear-cut.” – Stephen Gordon, on the illusory benefits […]
Ridden hard and put away wet
“Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me, I want people to know why I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way and some of the roads weren’t paved.” – Will Rogers Quotation of the Day for April 21, 2011
I have great friends
Quotation of the Day for November 9, 2009 “That same afternoon I was sitting on a stool in an intoxicated condition in Grogan’s licensed premises. Adjacent stools bore the forms of Brinsley and Kelly, my two true friends. The three of us were occupied in putting glasses of stout into the interior of our bodies […]
For my grandmother, who was also a good pirate
Perhaps it’s silly to post a link to a blog that purports to be written by a cat in honour of my Vanaema, but I like this piece and the tone is right. http://abbie.blogspot.com/2005/09/today-is-sad-day-i-am-vffeeling-very.html Rest well, Rita Kalda. December 4 1924 – February 7 2011.
Perspective
Thank you, sir, for worrying about the right things: John Williams has been making wine in California’s Napa Valley for nearly 30 years, and he farms so ecologically that his peers call him Mr. Green. But if you ask him how climate change will affect Napa’s world-famous wines, he gets irritated, almost insulted. “You know, […]
I’m okay, you’re okay – in small doses
Quotation of the Day for February 27, 2010 “Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone,” writes Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic. “In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially `on,’ we introverts need to turn off and recharge. This isn’t antisocial. It isn’t a sign of depression. It does […]
Yes, Doctor Freud, I think it does go back to my potty-training days
I feel a bit sorry for the writer, who is clearly stuck in potty-training hell with his kid, but this review did make me snort: Safety 1st Jack Potty ($33.65) Just as I was set to love the Boon, I was ready to despise Jack Potty—a potty chair that looks like a slot machine? Has […]
Quotation of the Day for January 13, 2010
Quotation of the Day for January 13, 2010 “But the main idea is the first one: hanging on, staying alive. Canadians are forever taking the national pulse like doctors at a sickbed: the aim is not to see whether the patient will live well but simply whether he will live at all. Our central idea […]
Quotation of the Day for December 3
Quotation of the Day for December 3, 2009 “She wondered why someone would bother to write that; but then, ‘Why bother’ was never a question you could ask about more or less anything on the Internet, otherwise the whole bunch of them shriveled to a cotton-candy nothing.” – Nick Hornby, in his novel Juliet, Naked.
I am sad my bank has no cheese vault
Quotation of the Day for September 3, 2009 “Thank heavens we caught the robbers before they grated it.” – William Bizzarri, on the theft and recovery of 570 wheels of Parmesan cheese held as collateral by the Credito Emiliano bank in Italy. Bizzarri manages the cheese vaults of the bank. [http://www.financialpost.com/m/story.html?id=1884766]
No mom jeans, then?
A brief movie review on BoingBoing raises a fashion issue I had not previously considered: …when you dress yourself in the morning, please take note that this outfit could possibly be the one in which you spend eternity as a reanimated corpse.
I’ve earned every one of mine
(Surviving the World)
Sensible words from Michael Pollan
Well, you know, it’s very interesting. Since this book came out, where I argue don’t buy high-fructose corn syrup and don’t buy products with more than five ingredients, suddenly the industry is—you know, they’re so clever. I have to hand it to them. But now they’re arguing that their products are simpler, and there’s new […]