I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.
—William F. Buckley, Jr., Rumbles Left and Right
To teach chemistry or psychology or even history or Greek a man must actually know something, but for English nothing seems to be necessary beyond a crude capacity to read and write.
—H. L. Mencken, in The American Mercury
Me, fail English? That’s unpossible.
—Ralph Wiggum, on The Simpsons
However hard you may try, there is never much to say about a henhouse.
—Jose Saramago
The chicken tasted to Flora like distributive injustice personified.
—Nell Zink, Doxology
Chubby Checker’s chicken-plucker’s voice carried distinctly across the crevasse of sub-arctic night.
—John Updike, Bech: A Book
And wouldn’t you know he’d be a singing man.
—Toni Morrison, Beloved
Oh, you mean the jingle-man!
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, on Edgar Allan Poe
Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.
—William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
It is time to strangle several bad poets.
—Kenneth Koch, “Fresh Air”
Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet.
—James Joyce, Ulysses
Higher Schlock
—Greil Marcus, on Leonard Cohen, Mystery Train
Looking like I’d spent the last seventy-two hours bobbing for apples in a vat of Gold Medal flour.
—Richard Price, on filing a story late
The things you can do in that men’s room of theirs!
—Aravind Adiga, on the Union Square Grill bathroom, Selection Day
His eyeballs look like he bought them in a joke shop.
—Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son
I generally based appraisals of my affections on the momentary condition of my genitalia.
—Nell Zink, The Wallcreeper
Whatever chemical change desire is had taken hold.
—Garth Greenwell, Cleanness
It wasn’t, in a word, simply that their eyes had met; other conscious organs, faculties, feelers had met as well.
—Henry James, The Wings of the Dove
Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met.
—William Faulkner
Like two moist cream cheeses.
—Edmund Wilson, on feet, I Thought of Daisy
A gruyere like a wheel fallen from some barbarian chariot, some Dutch cheeses suggesting decapitated heads smeared in dried blood.
—Émile Zola, The Belly of Paris
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
—G. K. Chesterton
Ah, Wensleydale! The Mozart of cheeses!
—T. S. Eliot
One of the basic rules of Esquire was, if you’re going to write about a bear, bring on the bear.
—Byron Dobell, Esquire editor
I enjoyed your article, but I preferred my own.
—Umberto Eco, to the editor of the TLS, after being heavily edited
Death itself is a maw, with, sometimes, a wiggling uvula.
—Charles Foster, Being a Beast
The jackal rips out the hare’s bowels, but the world rolls on.
—J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
The first thing to know about ground round steak is that it should not be that at all.
—M.F.K. Fisher
A good hamburger should taste like the sound of “Under the Boardwalk.”
—Keith Floyd
Eating out a radio.
—Michael Dickman, “Lakes Rivers Streams”
Why was a radio sinful? Lord knows. But it was.
So I had one.
—Reed Whittemore, “The Radio Under the Bed”
In Excelsis Diode.
—Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show
No one of character would make love by it.
—Norman Mailer, on L.A. pop radio, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket”
Nuts to the radio.
—Harold Ross, Letters from the Editor
It’s funny, isn’t it? A shop selling guns, like as if they were carrots and turnips.
—Beryl Bainbridge, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress
The .38 Special which rode under his left armpit like a tumor.
—Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
Guns make me thirsty.
Like a cherry bomb exploding in me.
—Andy Warhol, on being shot by Valerie Solanas
I’m a real lousy hunter … The deer are probably relieved when they smell me and know it’s me.
—Larry Brown, On Fire
Don’t wait to be hunted to hide.
—Samuel Beckett, Molloy
If a bullet’s going to get you, it’s already been fired.
—Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
I find failure endearing, don’t you?
—Max Beerbohm
There’s … a certain kind of excitement in disgrace.
—Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show
Who wouldn’t want to go down in flames?
—John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van
There are always a few drops left in the bottle of indignity.
—Andrew Sean Greer, Less
There is a kind of snobbery of failure. It’s a club, it’s the old school, it’s Skull and Bones.
—Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
Nothing amplifies failure like the hug of a stranger.
—Myla Goldberg, Bee Season
What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
There’s lots of things you never get, Judge, if you wait till you are asked … That is why I am not a gentleman, Judge.
—Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
No nice men are good at getting taxis.
—Katharine Whitehorn
I’m determined to read no more books where the blond-haired women carry away all the happiness.
—George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
I don’t want to be a sweetheart. I want to be the fucking love of your life.
—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
Whither thou goest, I will definitely go.
—Fran Ross, Oreo
Something fell off the shelf inside her.
—Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
We want you to know that we love you madly.
—Duke Ellington, to a London audience, with bland mockery
—Did you win? he asks.
—It wasn’t a match, I say. It was a lesson.
—Claudia Rankine, Citizen
I looked at the phone as if it had been a rattlesnake.
—Iris Murdoch, Under the Net
Men are so wedded to their gadgets … It belittles them … It takes away all their authority … A man ought to give the impression that he’s alone.
—Yasmina Reza, God of Carnage
Everybody sounds stoned, because they’re e-mailing people the whole time they’re talking to you.
—Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
How can I impress strangers with the gem-like flame of my literary passion if it’s a digital slate I’m carrying around, trying not to get it all thumbprinty?
—James Wolcott, in Vanity Fair
She was busted, broke and flat
Had to sell that pussycat.
—Gillian Welch, “The Way It Goes”
One thing about whoring: It put a chicken on the table.
—Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle
When the cigarette burns out, time’s up.
—Jodie Foster, in Taxi Driver
, on sleeping with a john
To all pimps and whores a merry syphilis and a happy gonorrhea.
—Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.
—Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street and Other Writings
What do I know of man’s destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.
—Samuel Beckett, “Enough”
My inner life tends to be measured out in radishes, meat and limes.
—Jonathan Gold
I beg your parsnips.
—James Joyce, Ulysses
My life like an old turnip: several places at once going bad.
—Lorrie Moore, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?
A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.
—Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson
A wise old chef once told me: Wait till peas are in season, then use frozen.
—Fergus Henderson
Is a pea cut in half one wounded thing or two?
—Octavia E. Butler, Adulthood Rites
Until they take away my hot dog.
—Seymour Krim, on how long he will keep getting by in literary New York, “For My Brothers and Sisters in the Failure Business”
Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.
—Larry McMurtry, In a Narrow Grave
Her right hand held a bottle of Pepsi that she’d clogged with salted peanuts and called a late lunch.
—Daniel Woodrell, Muscle for the Wing
Like a jar of peanut butter waiting for a thumb.
—Elizabeth Hardwick, on the young women in a Marge Piercy novel
How difficult are our fellow men to digest!
—Frederick Nietzsche, The Joyous Science
The sound of Bob Dylan’s voice changed more people’s ideas about the world than his political message did.
—Robert Ray, in Greil Marcus’s The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs
The better a singer’s voice, the harder it is to believe what they’re saying.
—David Byrne
Whiskey and smoke took all the high notes, now all I can sing is the blues.
—Jerry Lee Lewis, attributed
I sing in five or six different voices.
—Axl Rose
The most important of the voices, though, is Devil Woman.
—John Jeremiah Sullivan, on Axl Rose, Pulphead
Those who have a very loud voice are almost incapable of thinking about subtle things.
—Frederick Nietzsche, The Joyous Science
One is prepared for friendship, not for friends.
—Roberto Bolaño, Between Parentheses
Nearly anyone I’ve found worth knowing was difficult enough, vivid enough, to qualify at some point as my crazy friend.
—Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence
The chances are that if you aren’t “difficult” no one will write a book about you.
—Mary-Kay Wilmers, Human Relations and Other Difficulties
Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings.
—Robert Bloch
New York, killer of poets, do you remember the day you passed me through your lower intestine?
—Karl Shapiro, in Partisan Review
Sometimes I feel as if I’m being strangled by the sophisticated scum of New York.
—Charles Wright, The Messenger
I’m now making myself as scummy as I can.
—Arthur Rimbaud, letter
At any moment Manhattan could shank you, finish you off.
—Denis Johnson, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
I could stay living in this city if they just installed Blaupunkts in the cabs.
—Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
Look for rock outcroppings. Manhattan is full of schist.
—Fran Ross, Oreo
If there’s an intellectual highway, there’s also an intellectual subway.
—Stanley Crouch
When you lead a life of scholarship you can’t be bothered with the humorous realities, you know, tits, that kind of thing.
—Harold Pinter, Ashes to Ashes
Genitals are a great distraction to scholarship.
—Malcolm Bradbury, Cuts
He used to put his naked penis on the dinner table, laughing.
—Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior
I Long to Hold the Poetry Editor’s Penis in My Hand
—Francesca Bell, poem title
What I think about The New Yorker can only be expressed like this: *! @!!! @! *!!
—Elizabeth Bishop, letter
Take yir best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you’re still fuckin miles off the pace.
—Irvine Welsh, on heroin, Trainspotting
Picasso said the smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.
—Jean Cocteau
Two Benadryl were a joke. Like blowing a snot rocket at a forest fire.
—Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation
I don’t take any drugs, I take books.
—Ingeborg Bachmann, Malina
Ink, a Drug.
—Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister
No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.
—James Joyce, letter to his brother
Get your work done. If that doesn’t work, shut up and drink your gin.
—Ray Bradbury, Paris Review interview
A deadline is a fine substitute for a genuinely literary urge.
—Anthony Burgess
You lazy cocksucker. I want that Thinkpiece on my desk by Labor Day.
—Hunter S. Thompson, to Anthony Burgess
You’re not meant to be doing this. Plenty more where you came from.
—Gore Vidal, on people with writer’s block
Now everyone writes just like everyone poops.
—Sigrid Nunez, The Friend
If you eat enough books, you start pooping out words.
—Caitlin Moran
At fifty … you’re as likable as you’re going to get.
—Andrew Sean Greer, Less
Once you are over fifty they look just over your head as if you were a janitor.
—Jim Harrison, on women, The Beast God Forgot to Invent
It’s every woman’s tragedy that, after a certain age, she looks like a female impersonator.
—Angela Carter
And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look and feel like shit.
—Martin Amis, London Fields
Their dumpling God.
—Stanley Booth, describing the late Elvis Presley, in Esquire
Fat, forty and back.
—Sex Pistols reunion tour slogan
An invitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
—Arthur Symons
Two of the saddest words in the English language are “What party?” And L.A. is the “What party” capital of the world.
—Carrie Fisher
John, I’d love to come to your party, but that would mean I would have to leave my house.
—Johnny Cash, to John Prine
If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.
—Dorothy Parker
Milk’s a queer arrangement.
—James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
You know what milk is? A kind of pus. Think about that, you’re guzzling pus.
—Aravind Adiga, Amnesty
Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of ’em.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Queer things always happen in pairs.
—Flann O’Brien, The Best of Myles
Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated.
&nbs
p; —William H. Gass, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
College football would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played.
—H. L. Mencken, Minority Report
Baseball is a dull game only for those with dull minds.
—Red Smith
Soccer is popular because stupidity is popular.
—Jorge Luis Borges
To the victors belong the spoiled.
—Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show
I don’t even know who Mr. Watergate is.
—Vladimir Nabokov, 1974 interview
I’m going to Iowa for an award. Then I’m appearing at Carnegie Hall, it’s sold out. Then I’m sailing to France to be honored by the French government—I’d give it all up for one erection.
—Groucho Marx
Take the headache.
—B.B. King, to Buddy Guy, on the side effects of Viagra
This heaven gives me migraine.
—Gang of Four, “Natural’s Not in It”
That no one dies of migraine seems, to someone deep into an attack, an ambiguous blessing.
—Joan Didion, “In Bed”
The basic measure of defensive manners is: weed your social garden.
—Quentin Crisp, Manners from Heaven
I’ll start right now by eliminating you.
—Hattie McDaniel, on being told to eliminate her more “common” acquaintances
If you think squash is a competitive activity try flower arrangement.
—Alan Bennett, The Complete Talking Heads
Who described gardening as “the slowest of the performing arts”?
—Frederick Seidel, “To Mac Griswold”
I hate roses. Don’t you? It’s all right if you can hide them in a cutting garden, but I think a rose garden is the height of ick.
—Cy Twombly, in Vogue
The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window.
—Daniel Odier and William S. Burroughs, The Job
The best thing to do with a mimeograph is to drop
it from a five story window, on the head of a cop.
—Diane di Prima, “Goodbye Nkrumah”
Their singing is like a train crashing down a high embankment: a whirlwind of shrieking and banging.
—Anton Chekhov, on the Roma people, A Life in Letters
There was Eel Pie Island and a hotel where people had once drunk bottled beer and danced to what Charles Dickens described in Nicholas Nickleby as a “locomotive band.” Sadly, no recorded evidence of this music survives.
—Elvis Costello, Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink
If only history were wired for sound.
—Osbert Lancaster, Afternoons with Baedecker