deletia quotes archive

2010-02-26T19:05:00.001-08:00

"So, after we left you on Friday night, back at the campground I realized I had forgotten to bring along my contact lens case, No problem, because teaspoons will substitute nicely, in an Emergency. Unfortunately, Dad had cereal for breakfast, and ate my left lens. He’s such a fun, alert guy to hang out with!"
-Postcards From Yo Mama

2009-09-29T09:11:00.000-07:00

"You shall love your crooked neighbor/
With your crooked heart." -w. h. auden

2009-07-23T15:53:00.000-07:00

9AM You Know the Economy's Bad When History Professors Work at Rite Aid

Woman in line: I want to go somewhere foreign this summer. How about Guam?
Cashier: Actually, Guam is part of the United States.
Woman in line: Ugh, these things change so often. We must have gotten it, like, a year ago, right?
Cashier: Actually, we've owned Guam since the 1800s. It sends a non-voting member to Congress, but they have no elector, so they don't matter for presidential elections.
Woman in line: Oh, thank god.

Rite Aid
Doylestown, Pennsylvania

via Overheard in the Office, Jul 20, 2009

2009-07-23T12:52:00.001-07:00

"Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness." -Robertson Davies

2009-07-15T13:45:00.001-07:00

"Justice has a name, and that name--besides 'Justice'--is 'Captain Hammer'." -Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

2008-05-28T10:06:00.001-07:00

Co-Worker 1: You guys don't have any Kleenex.
Co-worker 2 (whose desk is right next to mine): And we don't have phones. And our desks are in the hallway.
Jocelyn: We are the third world of the 6th floor.
Co-Worker 1: I am going to bring you some Kleenex.
Jocelyn: You're the UN!

2008-05-28T10:04:00.001-07:00

"Wembley, first of all, you're not a little wimp. Secondly, what does a little wimp like you want with romance?" -Gobo Fraggle

2008-05-28T10:03:00.002-07:00

"And you can buy it at Best Buy... or whatever the Canadian equivalent of Best Buy is. [Hesitates] Which is probably Best Buy. You can probably buy it here, at this mall... because you can buy everything at this mall."
-Bright Eyes, at the Edmonton Event Centre show (West Edmonton Mall)

2008-05-28T10:03:00.001-07:00

"OK, but if you leave me here, I'll do something evil... like burning something... or... gluing things together." -Andrew

2008-05-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

Jordan: See, I have this philosophy.
Angela: You have a philosophy?
Jordan: Well, if I go somewhere and someone I know is there, then cool, there's something -- natural about it. But once you start making plans, then you have like, like obligations -- and that basically blows. So my feeling is, whatever happens, happens.
Angela: I have to say, I really respect that.
-My So-Called Life

2008-05-28T10:01:00.002-07:00

Co-worker #1: I need coffee.
Jocelyn: I need meaning for my life.
Co-worker #2: Dodgeball?
Jocelyn: I'll take it under consideration.

2008-05-28T10:01:00.001-07:00

Co-worker #1: I need coffee.
Jocelyn: I need meaning for my life.
Co-worker #2: Dodgeball?
Jocelyn: I'll take it under consideration.

2008-05-28T10:00:00.003-07:00

Jordan: "You know those guys? Up in the mountains?"
Angela: "What guys?"
Jordan: "Who make snow. Like, as their job."
Angela: "Oh yeah."
Jordan: "I would really like to do that."
Angela: "You mean part time, or...?"
[They make out]
-My So-Called Life

2008-05-28T10:00:00.001-07:00

"I've been speaking with aliens
They've agreed to abduct everyone but you
So we can start again..."
-Andy Dunlop

2008-05-28T09:59:00.003-07:00

They're turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers
But what's the real cost, 'cause the sneakers don't seem that much cheaper
Why are we still paying so much for sneakers when you got little kid slaves making them
What are your overheads?
-Flight of the Conchords

2008-05-28T09:59:00.001-07:00

Yet entertainment... remains the only sure means we have of bridging, or at least feeling as if we have bridged, the gulf of consciousness that separates each of us from everybody else."
-Michael Chabon, Maps and Legends

2008-05-28T09:58:00.000-07:00

"You see what I'm saying? You need to find your reason for living. You've gotta find your big, gigantic drum kit."
-Nick, Freaks and Geeks

2008-05-18T14:29:00.000-07:00

"When did crappy shirts with stupid stuff on them become cool?" -Keith, Veronica Mars

2008-03-03T08:55:00.003-08:00

"I don't know what's wrong with me, but I wish that it was something else..." -Jenny Owen Youngs, Drinking Song

2008-03-03T08:55:00.001-08:00

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." -- GK Chesterton

2008-01-25T16:20:00.001-08:00

Wembley Fraggle: "It didn't seem like I was a slave. I guess some slavery feels like freedom. I didn't notice what they were doing to me, until... well, until they tried to do it to you."
Tired Jocelyn: "That's hegemony, right there."

2007-09-07T11:23:00.002-07:00

"The whole world is about three drinks behind." -Humphrey Bogart

2007-09-07T11:23:00.001-07:00

"And guess who gets to be the bad guy who has to say, 'No you can't have peanut butter for the cute blonde and her poor island baby.' You know who? It's me!" -Hurley, Lost

2007-07-05T20:23:00.005-07:00

One night and one more time
Thanks for the memories
Even though they weren't so great
"He tastes like you, only sweeter"
-Fall Out Boy

2007-07-05T20:23:00.003-07:00

"I like fake crab better than real crab... I like the texture." -Me, seconds before I realized what a rube I am

2007-07-05T20:23:00.001-07:00

Michael: What we need is a backer.
Cameron: What's that?
Michael: Someone with money... who's stupid.
-10 Things I Hate About You

2007-07-05T20:22:00.003-07:00

"Excuse me, can you help me find my dog? He's a Norweigen elk hound. His name is Heinrich. I use him to hunt moose." -Mulder

2007-07-05T20:22:00.001-07:00

"This is my boyfriend Damien. I use the term 'boyfriend' loosely, as Damien is clearly a homosexual." -Margaret Cho on Sex in the City

2007-06-14T21:14:00.001-07:00

Homeless guy #1: Damn! I just got kicked out of the library! Damn!
Homeless guy #2: What did you do, man?
Homeless guy #1: I don't know. I don't know.
Homeless guy #2: Aren't you drunk?
Homeless guy #1: Well, yeah. Also, I might have been looking at dirty pictures on the computer.
Homeless guy #2: Aw, that's not so bad.
Homeless guy #1: And they said that I was being disrespectful to the librarians.
Homeless guy #2, freaking out: No way, man! You can never, never disrespect the librarians! Always respect librarians! What were you thinking? Are you an idiot?

Outside Boulder Public Library
Boulder, Colorado
overheardintheoffice.com

2007-06-06T12:51:00.000-07:00

"If facts were the only thing that counted, the telephone directory would be the book of books." -Werner Herzog in this very short interview with The Onion AV Club

2007-05-30T20:55:00.000-07:00

"The number of themes, of words, of texts, is limited. Therefore nothing is ever lost. If a book is lost, then someone will write it again, eventually. That should be enough immortality for anyone." -Jorge Luis Borges, quoted in Alberto Manguel's With Borges

2007-05-14T20:02:00.000-07:00

Luke: Here.
Rory: What’s that?
Luke: You look like you need pie.
Rory: I do?
Luke: Violent pencil tossing usually signals the need for pie.
Rory: What if I’d thrown a pen?
Luke: I would’ve brought you a trout.
Rory: What?
Luke: I don’t make the rules, I just carry them out.
-Gilmore Girls

2007-04-22T17:28:00.001-07:00

"there is a war on
and all of the morons
are winning, they are winning
year to year..."
-The Awkward Stage

2007-04-22T17:27:00.000-07:00

You better shut your mouth
Hold your breath
Kiss me now you'll catch my death
I mean it...
-Natalie Merchant, My Skin

2007-04-11T18:50:00.001-07:00

And I'm not sure what the trouble was that started all of this
The reasons all have run away, but the feeling never did
It's not something I would recommend, but it is one way to live
Cause what is simple in the moonlight by the morning never is
-Bright Eyes, Lua

2007-04-11T18:48:00.001-07:00

Homer: "I'm feelin' low, Apu. You got any of that beer that has candy floating in it, you know, Skittlebrau?"
Apu: "Such a product does not exist, sir! You must have dreamed it."
Homer: "Oh. Well then just gimme a six-pack and a couple of bags of Skittles."

2007-04-08T08:20:00.000-07:00

"I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same." -Iris Murdoch

2007-03-27T12:21:00.001-07:00

"I don't care if you think I'm racist. I only care if you think I'm thin." -Sarah Silverman

2007-03-27T12:20:00.000-07:00

"I'm seeking girls
In sales and marketing
Let's go make out
Up in the balcony..." -Mike Doughty

2007-03-23T20:18:00.000-07:00

"Can we reach no further in this subject than experience and probability?" -David Hume

2007-03-23T20:16:00.001-07:00

many boys've taken you for a ride,
hurt you deep inside
but you never slow down
-mary lou lord, speeding motorcycle

2007-03-23T20:14:00.001-07:00

Man has to live how he can: overlooked and dwarfed he makes himself his own theatre. Is the drama inside heroic or pathological? Outward acts often have an inside magnitude. The short story, with its shorter span than the novel's, with its freedom from forced complexity, its possible lucidness, is able, like the poetic drama, to measure man by his aspirations and dreams and place him alone on that stage which, inwardly, every man is conscious of occupying alone.
-Elizabeth Bowen, Collected Stories

2007-03-23T20:10:00.001-07:00

The worst of it wasn't the fact of being locked up, because life went on inside, and was sometimes more interesting than outside. The most highly qualified "prisoners of war"-- and the teaching staffs of all the southern universities were there-- set up various faculties, so a lot of us learnt languages, maths, quantum physics, world history, art history or the history of philosophy. Over two weeks, a professor called Iriarte gave a magnificent seminar on Keynes and the political reasoning of contemporary economists, which was attended by several army officers in addition to the hundred or so prisoners. The journalist and writer Andres Muller discoursed on the tactical errors of the Paris Communards, to the astonishment of the troops guarding the shoemaking workshop, which we had christened the Great Hall of the Temuco Anethaeum. Another famous POW, Genaro Avendano-- he was 'disappeared' in 1979-- moved both prisoners and soldiers with a dramatisation of the writer Unamuno's 1936 Salamanca speech denouncing Franco's Falangists. -Luis Sepulveda, Full Circle

2007-03-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

Oz: "You'll date any girl who can walk and talk."
Devon: "She doesn't have to talk."

2007-03-23T20:08:00.002-07:00

"She can't just be mean to me for no reason!"
"Sure she can. That's what we do in this family, since we can't kick the dog like normal people." -me, and my dad

2007-03-23T20:08:00.001-07:00

Jocelyn: "I miss going to school."
James: "You HATED school. You complained about it all last semester."
Jocelyn: "Yeah, I know. I'm probably one of those people who will never be happy."

2007-03-23T20:07:00.001-07:00

*phone rings*
Jocelyn: "Hello?"
Phone: *beeping sound*
Jocelyn: "Beep. Beeeep? Beeeeep."
Phone: *click*
Jocelyn: "I tried speaking to it in its own language but it didn't answer me."

2007-03-21T16:07:00.001-07:00

"I have no idea what you guys are talking about. I thought we were here to talk about petroleum." -Tommy, I ♥ Huckabees

2007-03-21T16:06:00.000-07:00

"I need to use my most important investigative tool... my library card." -Goren, Law & Order: Criminal Intent

2007-03-21T16:03:00.000-07:00

Milhouse: Remember the time he ate my goldfish? And you lied and said I never had goldfish. Then why did I have the bowl Bart? Why did I have the bowl?

2007-03-21T16:02:00.003-07:00

Homer: [drunk] Look, the thing about my family is there's five of us. Marge, Bart, Girl Bart, the one who doesn't talk, and the fat guy. How I loathe him.

2007-03-21T16:02:00.001-07:00

Ralph: Hi, Super Nintendo Chalmers!

2007-03-21T16:01:00.000-07:00

Homer: Yeah, Moe, that team sure did suck last night. They just plain sucked! I've seen teams suck before, but they were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked!
Marge: HOMER!
Homer: I gotta go, Moe, my damn weiner kids are listening.

2007-03-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

"Why does everyone automatically assume I know tailoring and cooking?" -my Warcraft character

2007-03-03T07:58:00.001-08:00

"I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences." -Gertrude Stein

2007-03-01T21:11:00.001-08:00

"A library is the best possible imitation, by human beings, of a divine mind, where the whole universe is viewed and understood at the same time." -Umberto Eco

2007-02-26T15:29:00.000-08:00

"I have done a lot of research, and I can tell you that not all non-violent demonstrations end non-violently." -Lilly, popular

2007-02-25T21:16:00.000-08:00

Libraries are places where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity. -Germaine Greer

2007-02-25T21:15:00.005-08:00

"If your library is not 'unsafe', it probably isn't doing its job." -John Berry, Library Journal, October 1999

2007-02-25T21:15:00.003-08:00

"Every burned book enlightens the world." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

2007-02-25T21:15:00.001-08:00

"The paper burns, but the words fly away." -Akiba ben Joseph

2007-02-25T21:14:00.005-08:00

"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas." -Alfred Whitney Griswold

2007-02-25T21:14:00.003-08:00

"Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime." -Potter Stewart

2007-02-25T21:14:00.001-08:00

"The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion." -Henry Steele Commager

2007-02-25T21:13:00.002-08:00

"Free societies... are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence." -Salman Rushdie

2007-02-25T21:13:00.001-08:00

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all." -Oscar Wilde

2007-02-25T21:09:00.001-08:00

"from here to the eyes and the ears of the 'Verse, that's my motto. Or it might be, if I started having a motto."
-Mr. Universe, Serenity

2007-02-21T15:35:00.001-08:00

Kitana: Zak, why exactly am I wearing a g-string bikini?
Zak: Because you are a model and you're a sonar operator.
-Incident at Loch Ness

2007-02-21T15:33:00.002-08:00

Warrick: Who brings a gun to a knife fight?
Grissom: The winner?
-Csi

2007-02-21T15:33:00.001-08:00

Veronica: I want to find out who this kid is and what art room he voted in.
Wallace: Yeah, and I want a statue of myself in the main lobby, holding a musket and staring down danger. Since we're talking about stuff we want.

2007-02-21T12:51:00.001-08:00

Jayne: You got the light, from the console to keep you, to lift you up... they shine like little angels. [He passes out]
Wash: Did he just go crazy and fall asleep?
-Firefly

2007-02-21T12:48:00.000-08:00

Mal: Looks like we're just in the nick of time! What's that make us?
Zoe: Big. Damn. Heroes. Sir.
Mal: Ain't we just! Sorry to interrupt, folks. But y'all got something that belongs to us. And we'd like it it back.
Town Patriarch: This is a holy cleansing. You can't think to thwart god's will.
Mal: Y'all see the man hanging out of the spaceship with the really big gun? Now I'm not saying you weren't easy to find. But it was kinda out of our way, and he didn't want to come in the first place. Man's lookin' to kill some folk. So really, it's his will y'all should worry about thwarting. Gotta say, doctor, your talent for alienatin' folk is near miraculous.
Simon: Yes, I'm very proud.
Mal: Cut her down.
Town Patriarch: The girl is a witch.
Mal: Yeah, but she's our witch--[cocks gun] so cut her the hell down.
-Firefly

2007-02-21T12:36:00.001-08:00

"It's not true that life is one damn thing after another—it's one damn thing over and over." -Edna St. Vincent Millay

2007-02-21T12:33:00.001-08:00

For I must tell you friendly in your ear,
Sell when you can: you are not for all markets:
Cry the man mercy; love him; take his offer...
-as you like it

2007-02-21T12:31:00.001-08:00

had i the heavens' embroidered cloths,
enwrought with golden and silver light,
the blue and the dim and the dark cloths
of night and the light and the half-light
i would spread the cloths under your feet.
but i, being poor, have only my dreams;
i have spread my dreams under your feet;
tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
-yeats

2007-02-21T12:29:00.001-08:00

"Who could possibly be phoning me... everyone i know lives here!" -Buffy

2007-02-21T12:27:00.001-08:00

think not i love him,
though i ask for him
'tis but a peevish boy--
yet he talks well;
but what care i for words?
yet words do well...
when he that speaks them
pleases those that hear.
it is a pretty youth--
not too pretty
but sure he's proud
and yet his pride becomes him.
he'll make a proper man.
-As You Like It, III.v

2007-02-21T12:26:00.001-08:00

Mac: Are you freaking kidding me? The Pi Sig mega apocalypse? Hump the furniture, party back to the stone age, fifty keg bacchanalia?
Veronica: Sounds like fun, right?
Mac: Will they let me in? I think all the glitter has come off my porn star tube top.
-Veronica Mars

2007-02-21T12:19:00.001-08:00

"Smithers, can't you iron these creases out of my pants?"
"Mr. Burns, sir, those creases are in your legs."
"Ah yes, so they are."
-The Simpsons

2007-02-21T12:14:00.001-08:00

we love chemistry so you don't have to.
-sign posted on undergrad chemistry students' association door

2007-02-19T07:26:00.001-08:00

"Information has become a form of garbage, not only incapable of answering the most fundamental human questions but barely useful in providing coherent direction to the solution of even mundane problems. To say it still another way: the milieu in which Technopoly flourishes is one in which the tie between information and human purpose has been severed, i.e., information appears indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume and at high speeds, and disconnected from theory, meaning, or purpose." -Neil Postman, Technopoly

2007-02-19T07:25:00.001-08:00

"'I make mistakes, but I am on the side of Good,' the Golux said, 'by accident and happenchance. I had high hopes of being evil when I was two, but in my youth I came upon a firefly burning in a spider's web. I saved the victim's life.'
'The firefly's?' asked the minstrel.
'The spider's. The blinking arsonist had set the web on fire.'"
-The Thirteen Clocks, by James Thurber

2007-02-19T07:24:00.001-08:00

"And my friends are better prepared mentally than anybody else for the future that is actually going to arrive... me and my friends are throwing-out consultants. Wish us all luck; we send you resumes and kisses." -Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

2007-02-19T07:23:00.001-08:00

"I suppose that even the most pleasurable of imaginable occupations, that of batting baseballs through the windows of the R.C.A. building, would pall a little as the days ran on." -James Thurber on how all occupations have their disadvantages

2007-02-18T09:27:00.003-08:00

Professor Walsh: So, the Slayer.
Buffy: Yeah, that's me.
Walsh: We thought you were a myth.
Buffy: Well, you were myth-taken.

2007-02-18T09:27:00.001-08:00

If you have walked into a museum lately-- whether you did so to attend an art exhibition or to escape from the police-- you may have noticed a type of painting known as a triptych. A triptych has three panels, with something different painted on each of the panels. For instance, my friend Professor Reed made a triptych for me, and he painted fire on one panel, a typewriter on another, and the face of a beautiful and intelligent woman on the third. The triptych is called "What Happened to Beatrice" and I cannot look yupon it without weeping.

-A Series of Unfortunate Events: book the Fifth

2007-02-18T09:25:00.001-08:00

My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, by anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses-- the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions-- which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way.
-Vladimir Nabokov, in the afterward to Lolita

2007-02-18T09:24:00.001-08:00

A man my age should not aim for boyishness. He should wear an old tweed jacket and wool trousers and a silk vest with a great belly under it and have wild eyebrows the size of rats and carry a knobby walking stick and smoke torpedo cigars and sit around kicking the bejabbers out of the government. A guy can do that in Scotland.
-Garrison Keillor, "Crankiness in Decline, Says Old Guy"

2007-02-18T09:22:00.003-08:00

Drusilla: I'm naming all the stars.
Spike: You can't see the stars, love. That's the ceiling. Also, it's day.

2007-02-18T09:21:00.001-08:00

A black figure in a velvet mask and hood and cloak disappeared behind a tree. "The cold Duke's spy-in-chief," the traveler said, "a man named Whisper. Tomorrow he will die. He'll die because, to name your sins, he'll have to mention mittens. I leave at once for other lands, since I have mentioned mittens. You'll never live to wed his neice. You'll only die to feed his geese. Goodbye, good night, and sorry."
-James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks

2007-02-18T09:20:00.002-08:00

"Love and stoplights can be cruel." -Sesame Street

2007-02-18T09:20:00.001-08:00

"carpe diem. You told me that."
"What? Fish of the day?"
-buffy

2007-02-18T09:19:00.004-08:00

anchovies, anchovies, you're so delicious
I love you more than all the other fishes!
-Dawn

2007-02-18T09:19:00.003-08:00

"Hello, I'm Troy McClure. You might recognize me from such educational films as Lead Paint: Delicious but Deadly and Here Comes The Metric System!" -Troy McClure, Simpsons

2007-02-18T09:19:00.001-08:00

"i am adrift in a world of dreary khaki." -Amelie

2007-02-18T09:18:00.003-08:00

"It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Loreena Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything that you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana -- indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy... War, murder, death -- all the same to you as bottles of beer, and the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensation of time and space into split seconds, instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virile madness, and everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure and pain... and love."
-Network

2007-02-18T09:18:00.001-08:00

"there are some things that I will not tolerate. Students, lingering in the halls after school. Horrible murders with organs being removed. And also smoking." -Principal Snyder, Buffy

2007-02-18T09:17:00.003-08:00

"Besides getting several paper cuts in the same day or receiving news that someone in your family has betrayed you to your enemies, one of the most unpleasant experiences in life is a job interview. ...I once had a very difficult job interview in which I had not only to explain that I could hit an olive with a bow and arrow, memorize up to three pages of poetry, and determine if there was poison mixed into a cheese fondue without tasting it, but I had to demonstrate all these things as well." -The Carnivorous Carnival

2007-02-18T09:17:00.001-08:00

"A life of abundance had turned her two boys into an element other than gold-- lead? silicon? bismuth? But then Sarah-- Sarah was an element finer than gold-- carbon crystallized as diamond-- a bolt of lightning frozen in midflash, sliced into strips, and stored in a vault."
-Douglas Coupland, All Families Are Psychotic

2007-02-18T09:16:00.003-08:00

"Are you a doctor?" Milo asked, trying to feel as well as possible.
"I am KAKOPHONOUS A. DISCHORD, DOCTOR OF DISSONANCE," roared the man, and as he spoke, several small explosions and a grinding crash were heard.
"What does the A. stand for?" stammered the nervous bug, too frightened to move.
"AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE," bellowed the doctor.

-The Phantom Tollbooth