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Sanity is a cozy lie.
-- Susan Sontag
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.
-- Susan Sontag
Humans need fantasy to be human. To be where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
"Tooth Fairies? Hogfathers? Little--"
Yes. As practice. You have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
Yes. Justice. Mercy. Duty. That sort of thing.
"They're not the same at all!"
You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet... Death waved a hand. And yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some... rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point--"
My point exactly
-- Terry Pratchett (Death and Susan in <em>Hogfather</em>)
"The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions."
-- Susan Sontag
Old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time.
(A coffee cup)
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
-- Susan Ertz
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett (Hogfather)
"WARNING: This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the Universe."
-- Susan Hewitt and Edward Subitzky
Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their minds.
-- Susan Sontag
Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
-- Ingrid Bergman
On applause: They named it Ovation from the Latin ovis, a sheep.
-- Plutarch
When in danger, when in doubt,
run in circles, scream and shout.
When in trouble, when in doubt,
run in circles, scream and shout
Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?
Don't talk to me about the public not being able to stomach the abnormal, man -- most people get too used to lying to themselves about anything uncomfortable at so early an age that they themselves are not a reliable source.
-- Susan Juroff
Ponder: "It's all done by magic, Archchancellor."
Ridcully: "Ah. Right. None of that complicated business with springs and cogwheels and tubes and stuff, then."
Ponder: "That's right, sir. Just magic. Sufficiently advanced magic."
-- Terry Pratchett (Hogfather)
...as opposed to Xena's paradox, which is, "How exactly can she fight in that leather outfit, and leave all of that flesh exposed, and survive?"
To err is human. And stupid.
"Improvised be damned! I thought of it this morning in my bath and I wish now I hadn't wasted it on this little crowd."
-- Winston Churchill
Math Anxiety: An intense lifelong fear of two trains approaching each other at speeds of 60 and 80 mph.
(Cynic's Dictionary)
No Risk Lifestyle, n:
Death
Abnormal, adj:
Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.
-- Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary)
Headline: Miners Refuse to Work after Death
"Men make angry music and it's called rock-and-roll; women include anger in their vocabulary and suddenly they're angry and militant."
-- Ani DiFranco
The way to a man's heart is through his stomach and up.
Nononono. fourth and fifth ribs. Cleaner, too...
-- Two girls, HPslash
I'm not doing this just to be weird.
Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that's bad for you.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for them Mexicans."
-- Some politician in Texas
Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains arouse me.
Grammar is not a vice (though excessive picking at it can be). And nonstandard words/grammar can be used to good effect--but no one can do that without knowing how they're deviating.
-- Randy Clark
Reporter, n: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.
-- Ambrose Bierce
She wanted a holiday in Australia, she said, and if I turned it into work she'd hit me--so I gave in, because I did not want to be beaten about the Bush.
-- Terry Pratchett (alt.fan.pratchett)
"How else am I to get you to treat me like a man of weight and substance unless I act as morally perturbed and angst-ridden as everyone else in this room?"
-- Beast (X-Men comic)
"You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die from asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen."
-- Arthur coping with certain death as best as he can. (The High Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.
"I may be crazy.

But I can fly."
It's a joke. Like the funny kind, but different.
The default Magic Word, Abracadabra, actually is a corruption of the Hebrew phrase ha-Bracha dab'ra which means "pronounce the blessing".
"Jacob Sullum has produced a thoughtful, sane, and logical analysis of our drug laws. Is that even legal?"
-- Dave Barry
People want stories about things they can relate to: life and death, good and evil.