Authoritative-ish citations are added and updated as available.
Today. Today…at the edge of our hope, at the end of our time, we have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other. Today there is not a man nor woman in here that shall stand alone. Not today. Today we face the monsters that are at our door and bring the fight to them! Today, we are canceling the apocalypse!
—Stacker Pentecost, Pacific Rim (2013)
Toro, Guillermo del, et al. Pacific Rim. 2013, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1663662/reference. Accessed 29 Sept. 2020.
#verified
Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.
—Nick Fury, The Avengers (2012)
#verified
I used to say to our audiences: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
—Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935), ISBN 0-520-08198-6; repr. University of California Press, 1994, p. 109.
#verified
People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore.
I've finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun.
This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. `
—Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death. New York: Dell, 1980.
#verified
The awful thing about life is this: Everybody has their reasons.
Rules of the Game (1939)
Renoir, Jean, and Carl Koch. 1950. The Rules of the Game. Directed by Jean Renoir.
#verified
Suffering equals pain times resistance.
—Shinzen Young
#unverified
Cocaine is still collecting royalties for all of these songs.
—Matt Christman, Chapo Grey Wolf #379 2019-12-26
If you chase two rabbits, you will lose them both.
Qui chasse deux lièvres n'en prend pas un.
What is the real origin of the proverb “If you chase two rabbits, you will lose them both”? - Quora
Your words will go to places you will never go.
—minister at First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem
Their Eyes Weren’t Watching God
“EVERYTHING IS COPY.”
This is something that Nora’s mother always told her, so it was something she lived her life by. At first, it confused me. One day I found something she said that better explained it. She said, “My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next.” I think that’s a wonderful way to look at life. Even if you’re going through something horrific, at least you can write about it one day. If there’s something you don’t want to do, use it as material another day. This is definitely something many people should and do live their lives by, especially if you’re a writer.
9 Nora Ephron Quotes to Inspire You as a Woman and a Writer ...
All I do is lie, and that has made me immune to compliments.
—David Sedaris, The Santaland Diaries
Sedaris, David. Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays. Little, Brown, 1994.
#verified
You have to impose, in fact—this may sound very strange—you have to decide who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.
#unverified
For my friends everything. For my enemies the law.
—Óscar R. Benavides
Let go, and move on.
—rule at John Siracusa's kids' elementary school
#nocite
They used us as an excuse to go mad and then blamed it on us.
—George Harrison
They gave their money, and they gave their screams. But the Beatles kind of gave their nervous systems. They used us as an excuse to go mad, the world did, and then blamed it on us.
—George Harrison
#nocite
Via Dr. Tom
I cannot help thinking about the immediate circumstances which have brought a thing to pass, rather than about any ‘will’ setting them in motion. What is done by what is called myself is, I feel, done by something greater than myself in me.”
— James Maxwell (1879), “Comment to Fenton Hort when terminally ill”
#nocite
On Robert Lowell:
"It’s terrible," he told Robert Giroux, "to think that all I’ve suffered, and all the suffering I’ve caused, might have arisen from the lack of a little salt in my brain."
Jamison, Kay R., & Thomas A. Traill. Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character. Knopf, 2017.
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Meinertzhagen's Haversack
"[Meinertzhagen] is frequently credited with a surprise attack known as the Haversack Ruse in October 1917: during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of the First World War, according to his diary, he let a haversack containing false British battle plans fall into Ottoman military hands, thereby bringing about the British victory in the Battle of Beersheba and Gaza."
You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.
― Pema Chödrön
Chödrön, Pema. When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Shambhala Publications, 1997.
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Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it,
(William Shakespeare, MacBeth 1.4.7-8)
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(The Stanton-Walsh Rule)
No movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.
—Roger Ebert
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The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.
―Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
#nocite
Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.
—Haruki Murakami
Murakami, Haruki. “Always on the Side of the Egg.” Haaretz.com, Haaretz, 17 Feb. 2009, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/1.5076881.
Murakami, Haruki. 2009. “Always on the Side of the Egg - Israeli Culture - Haaretz.Com.” Haaretz.Com. Haaretz. February 17, 2009. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/1.5076881.
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Envy targets the envied but torments the envious.
—Bhagavad Gita
Vyasa. Bhagavad Gita.
#unverified
Please note that there are only two references to sports in this book, and both are appropriately dismissive. If you wish for sports information, might I kindly refer you to every other aspect of our culture?
Hodgman, John. The Areas of My Expertise: A Compendium of Complete World Knowledge Compiled with Instructive Annotation and Arranged in Useful Order by Myself. New York, NY: Riverhead Books, 2006. Print.
Every choice is a chance.
—Ted Lasso
“Inverting the Pyramid of Success.” Ted Lasso, directed by Declan Lowney, s02e12, AppleTV+, 8 Oct. 2021, https://tv.apple.com/us/episode/inverting-the-pyramid-of-success/umc.cmc.5500bhb3m7hpo8q50gkfzgq88?showId=umc.cmc.vtoh0mn0xn7t3c643xqonfzy.
Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.
—Mephistopheles
Marlowe, Christopher. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. Ca. 1593.
#verified
God is the name of the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape.
—Barry Taylor (AC/DC road manager)
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But, what if I’m a factory, and all I’m manufacturing is red flags?
—Maria Bamford
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Brady, Jordan, director. Maria Bamford: The Special Special Special! IMDb, IMDb.Com, 28 Nov. 2012, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2546038/. Accessed 2 Jan. 2024.
"A mistake is a Buddhist gift."
Director Terry Gilliam to Robin Williams, ca. 1995.
cf. https://youtu.be/RkRTy-6v4kE?si=nzqm9qE2IIhU4R7W
#nocite