English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent? Have you ever seen a horsefull carriage or a strapfull gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would actually hurt a fly?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.
|
Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. Wouldn't you say, she asked, that killings like this are influenced by violent movies? No, I said, I wouldn't say that. But what about 'Basketball Diaries'? She asked. Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun? The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office, and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it. The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. Events like this, I said, if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; These two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory.
|
So if I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written...Michelangelo? You know a lot about him I bet. Life's work, criticisms, political aspirations. But you couldn't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. And if I asked you about women I'm sure you could give me a syllabus of your personal favorites, and maybe you've been laid a few times too. But you couldn't tell me how it feels to wake up next to a woman and be truly happy. If I asked you about war you could refer me to a bevy of fictional and non-fictional material, but you've never been in one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap and watched him draw his last breath, looking to you for help. And if I asked you about love I'd get a sonnet, but you've never looked at a woman and been truly vulnerable. Known that someone could kill you with a look. That someone could rescue you from grief. That God had put an angel on Earth just for you. And you wouldn't know how it felt to be her angel. To have the love be there for her forever. Through anything, through cancer. You wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand and not leaving because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term 'visiting hours' didn't apply to you. And you wouldn't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you lose something you love more than yourself, and you've never dared to love anything that much. I look at you and I don't see an intelligent confident man, I don't see a peer, and I don't see my equal. I see a boy. Nobody could possibly understand you, right Will? Yet you presume to know so much about me because of a painting you saw. You must know everything about me. You're an orphan, right? Do you think I would presume to know the first thing about who you are because I read 'Oliver Twist?' And I don't buy the argument that you don't want to be here, because I think you like all the attention you're getting. Personally, I don't care. There's nothing you can tell me that I can't read somewhere else. Unless we talk about your life. But you won't do that. Maybe you're afraid of what you might say.
|
Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.
|
Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!
|
To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honorable to which a man can be called?
|
All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.
|
My thinking had been opened up wide in Mecca. I wrote long letters to my friends, in which I tried to convey to them my new insights into the American black man’s struggle and his problems as well as the depths of my search for truth and justice. “I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda,” I had written to these friends. “I am for truth, no matter who tells it. I am for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I am a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” The American white man’s press called me the angriest Negro in America. I wouldn’t deny that charge; I spoke exactly as I felt. I believe in anger. I believe it is a crime for anyone who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself. I am for violence if non-violence means that we continue postponing or even delaying a solution to the American black man’s problem. White man hates to hear anybody, especially a black man, talk about the crime that the white man perpetrated on the black man. But let me remind you that when the white man came into this country, he certainly wasn’t demonstrating non-violence.
|
And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways', Yossarian continued 'There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?
|
That's the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much revernece can you have for a supreme being who finds it necassary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His system of creation?
|
The best principle is not only to fight the last battle, ... In July we talked a lot about subways. In September we talked a lot about hurricanes. We still need to talk about aviation, about avian flu.
|
I'm very pleased with their progress. I see two guys that know how to prepare and that love the game. When you talk about the mental preparation of a quarterback and functional intelligence, I see two guys that have what you want. I've seen great progress in five practices. Personally, I'm very excited to see where we're going to be come August with these two young men.
|
Murders are exciting and lift people into a heart-beating awe as religion is supposed to do, after seeing one in the street young couples will go back to bed and make love, people will cross themselves and thank God for the gift of their stuporous lives, old folks will talk to each other over cups of hot water with lemon because murders are enlivened sermons to be analyzed and considered and relished, they speak to the timid of the dangers of rebellion, murders are perceived as momentary descents of God and so provide joy and hope and righteous satisfaction to parishioners, who will talk about them for years afterward to anyone who will listen.
|
And the snow falls down melts before it even hits the ground. And I'm standing here listening to the sound of your hand washing back and forth across my filthy heart. And i don't know if I should say 'I'm sorry' or 'thank you'. I try to speak but the tears choke the words and I think I finally know what they mean when they talk about joy.
|
Personally, I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions of society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be establishedat every level--there's little bargaining, a little give and take,but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until the major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.
|
My critics feel there was a lack of fairness in the opera, because the Palestinians are treated with romantic harmonies and choruses of longing, and the Jews are treated unfairly because all we hear about them are their bodily ailments. And, yes, you do hear about Marilyn and Leon Klinghoffer's bodily problems, like their hip replacements, because that's exactly the sort of thing that a retired person on a cruise would talk about.
|
My critics feel there was a lack of fairness in the opera, because the Palestinians are treated with romantic harmonies and choruses of longing, and the Jews are treated unfairly because all we hear about them are their bodily ailments, ... And, yes, you do hear about Marilyn and Leon Klinghoffer's bodily problems, like their hip replacements, because that's exactly the sort of thing that a retired person on a cruise would talk about.
|
The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it's usually lousy.
|
People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.
|
They talk about their Pilgrim blood, Their birthright high and holy A mountain-stream that ends in mud Methinks is melancholy.
|
Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.
|
People have to talk about something just to keep their good voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say
|
I think there is a choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.
|
What nonsense people talk about happy marriages! A man can be happy with any woman so long as he doesn't love her
|
I think it is a marvelous way to keep directors' interests and shareholders interests as closely aligned as possible, with both an upside and a downside component. Too often, people talk about interests being aligned when the directors get the upside and shareholders get the downside.
|
The first rule of Fight Club is . . . you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is . . . you do not talk about Fight Club! Third rule of Fight Club: someone yells 'stop,' goes limp, taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: no shirts, no shoes. Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And, the eighth and final rule: if this is your first night at Fight Club . . . you have to fight.
|
I phoned Midori. 'I have to talk to you' I said. 'I have a million things to talk to you about. A million things we have to talk about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning'. Midori responded with a long, long silence - the silence of all the misty rain in the world falling on all the new-mown lawns of the world. Forehead pressed against the glass, I shut my eyes and waited. At last, Midori's quiet voice broke the silence: 'Where are you now?' Where was I now? Gripping the receiver, I raised my head and turned to see what lay beyond the phone box. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again I called out for Midori from the dead centre of this place that was no place.
|
Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much. Certainly it is the most burdened of all human words. Precisely for that reason it is the most imperishable and unavoidable. And how much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others.
|
They talk about a woman's sphere, as though it had a limit. There's not a place in earth or heaven. There's not a task to mankind given... without a woman in it.
|
We have a pledge with the government and 19 states that none of us is going to talk about any aspect of any settlement efforts and we're not going to violate that pledge even if others do. We are committed to working with the government in good faith to explore whether it's possible to resolve this case so everyone can move forward.
|