Jottings from the notebook

FRIEND IN HER MID-30'S: So how old are you again?
ME: I'm at that in-between age--biologically old enough to be your father, and emotionally young enough to be your child.

Frank Sinatra actually saved a man’s life once.  He just said three words.  “Boys, that’s enough.”

“What’s it like outside?”

“Cold and depressing, like my ex-husband.”

The bosses are happy when YOU feel helpless.  They’re pleased when they think the source of your trouble is your family . . . they even like addicts as long as they’re mostly out of sight.  After all, addiction is just the last stage of consumerism.

                -- Charles Baxter

Who HASN’T gotten hurt?  If you get to a certain age and you’ve never been hurt, then that means you were the asshole.

Justice is incidental to Law and Order

                -- J Edgar Hoover

I’m talking to you pre-coffee?  I don’t know whether to be honored or terrified.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.                       

                -- Steven Weinberg

The Roman Catholic Church is like a school where the best students are always expelled.

                -- Paul Valery

Scottish men: they’re so sexy they put the laid in plaid.

“Are you having a good time?”

“I’m surrounded by horny, stupid men.”

“Isn’t that great? You can get laid and reinforce your self-esteem at the same time.”

                -- Mike Carey, Lucifer

Love is a weird mix of nervousness and serenity—like an ache mixed with a hug.

Only the mediocre are always at their best.

                -- Jean Giradoux 

A woman has her first child the moment she says “I do.”

Winning is the mark of Abel.

                -- Diane Arbus

Closeness gives birth to distance every time.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever felt responsible.

                -- Stanislaw Lec

Guys are like refrigerators. You keep going back to the ones that are half-empty, hoping this time it’ll be there, that thing that you want.

I’d rather be whole than good.

                -- Carl Jung

If you want to bet on who will do the dumbest thing in the world, pick the smartest guy in the room.

The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds come home to roost.

                -- Arthur Miller

Never forget that, if you want to forgive your enemies, first you have to make them.

Once we were citizens. Then we were consumers. Now we're just data.

                -- Art Yomama 

He’s the kind of writer who does to his women what Nabokov did to his butterflies.

Whenever I tried to sing of love, it turned to pain. And again, when I tried to sing of pain, it turned to love.

                -- Schubert

The future is going to be a vast conforming suburb of the soul.

                -- JG Ballard, 1982 

REPORTER: Did you ever sleep with General Eisenhower?

MARLENE DIETRICH: How could I, darling? He was never at the front.

Marriage is all about learning how to live with someone you used to think you could never live without.

Sacrifice is a word that makes people feel noble about slaughter.

                 -- Kate Atkinson, A God In Ruins

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.

                -- HG Wells

If I were you, we'd both be miserable.

STUDIO HEAD: We want you to rewrite and direct Cleopatra. Name your price.

NUNNALLY JOHNSON: Ten percent of the losses.

I have a cobweb soul; it feels everything.

He used to be a great artist, but now he’s only a genius.

                -- Braque on Picasso

You must come again when you have less time.

                -- Walter Sickert showing Denton Welch the door

People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.

                -- John Kenneth Galbraith

The only perfect lovers are the ones who got away.

A man asked Mr. K. whether there is a God. Mr. K. said: “I advise you to consider whether, depending on the answer, your behavior would change. If it would not change, then we can drop the question. If it would change, then I can at least be of help to the extent that I can say, you have already decided: you need a God.”

                -- Stories of Mr Keuner, Bertolt Brecht
 

The heart has no sex.

                   -- Art Yomama

Jottings from the Notebook

SHE:  How many languages do you speak?

HE:  Two.  American and English.

SHE:  What’s the difference?

HE:  American has more superlatives. 

“[Charles MacArthur]  was over at Universal, adapting his last play, a task Scott imagined was like slowly poisoning your own child.”

                        —Stewart O’Nan, West Of Sunrise 

What we call Tragedy is what happens when Reality decides to disrupt our idea of reality.

“Up until 50 I was getting older.  Now I’m aging.”

                        -- Rob O’Neill

Whenever I get sick, I listen to The Cure. 

“Shut up, Arnold, or I’ll direct the play the way you wrote it.”

   -- John Dexter to Arnold Wesker during rehearsals for the 1958 production of Chicken Soup With Barley.

What the world calls originality is just imitation in this year’s suit. 

“We have to get rid of the leftovers.”

     —The current rallying cry of Park Slope
    hipsters, referring to all the people who lived
    in Brooklyn before it was trendy.

All countries begin as David and end as Goliath. 

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

                —John Steinbeck

 “I am often asked the question ‘How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few?’ The answer is ‘By being persuaded to identify with them.’ ”  

                —EL Doctorow, Ragtime 

The longer it takes before disaster strikes, the less you expect it to happen.  And when it does happen, it’s always treated like a random exception, and never the rule. 

"Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together." 

                —Eugene Ionesco

Whenever I have Alzheimer’s, I listen to The Who. 

“If you want to end the war in a week, give the Australians a two-day pass and tell them they can’t go to Berlin.”

                — Unnamed General during World War II 

“You know, I’d almost forgotten what your eyes looked like. Still the same. Piss holes in the snow.”

                        —Carter, Get Carter  

She pops up out of nowhere, sticks around long enough to remind me of how magical she is, and then vanishes off the face of the earth.  Y’know, like Brigadoon.

What does not change / is the will to change

                —Charles Olson, “The Kingfishers”

 “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” 

                        —Thoreau 

Whenever I’m indecisive, I listen to Yes. 

“Success takes you away from what you know, while failure condemns you to it.”

                        —Rachel Cusk, Outline

Some people have one great dream in life which they fail to fulfill.  Others have no dream at all and fail to fulfill even that.

         —Fernando Pessoa, The Book Of Disquiet 

Every solution undermines our understanding. 

i well up at proposals, know there’s

nothing like a vow to signal endings.

                        —Viki Holms, “Muse”

INTERVIEWER: What do you say to critics who claim that you’ve never written anything approaching the brilliance of Catch-22?
JOSEPH HELLER: I say that nobody else has, either.

Whenever I’m out of my element, I listen to Earth, Wind & Fire.

And as far as this year's Super Bowl is concerned:

 

 

Jottings from the notebook

 

Broadway: an institution which brings great writers to the attention of the world by never producing any of their plays.

 

Life is a divorce that masquerades as a wedding.

For my whole life, sex was the axe behind the sign IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS.

                -- Mandi Seaton

 

What do you call six redheads on a skewer?

A shiksa-bab.

Reality: an illusion caused by mescaline deficiency.

                -- NF Simpson

To the caterpillar, it’s death; to the butterfly, it’s birth.

You’re always the villain in your ex-lover’s story.

“The love of form is a love of endings.”

                -- Louise Glück

Life is the gift God loans you until He figures out how He’s going to take it away.

When it comes to love, version always trumps vision.

To live is to crochet according to a pattern we were given. 

                -- Fernando Pessoa

Time is the pond; life is the stone; we are the ripples.

“I never hate in the plural.”

                -- Stewart Granger, Bhowani Junction

Death is the recluse in the neighborhood,

The old coot with the nasty disposition

Who calls the cops every time we make noise.

We never talk of him because we know

That if we do, he’ll come knock on our door.

Sanity: an illusion caused by alcohol deficiency.

                -- NF Simpson

Life is a barracks where everyone trains to be one of the fallen.

“ . . . My own lowest and most indefensible judgments of myself, which are the only judgments anyone ever trusts.”

                -- Paul Rudnick, Gorgeous

It’s the machine that’s old; the driver’s still young.

Relationships are like wars—you’re always fighting the last one.

Whenever I see a dead body . . . the corpse looks to me like a suit that was left behind.  Someone went away and didn’t need to take the one and only outfit he’d worn.

                -- Fernando Pessoa

INTERVIEWER:  So what’s your secret to attracting men?

MANDI SEATON:  Simple.  All you have to do is act like an exquisitely blasé slut.

 

Never ask: “Where do you work?” or “What do you do?”

Always ask: “What are you fighting for?”

Love is the name we give to the fever we deliberately catch once we’ve infected someone else with our desire.

“I thought you were mysterious, and then I realized mysterious meant depressed.”

              -- Christian Bale to Jennifer Lawrence, American

                  Hustle

In politics, you only check the eggs after the omelet comes out bad.

The lonely will always tell you where they were before they tell you what happened.

NICO:  First you’re on top of the world, and then the world is on top of you.

MANDI SEATON:  The world can get on top of me all it wants as long as it pays for dinner.

Love: an illusion caused by self-esteem deficiency.

                -- Teo Pozzi

 

 

Jottings from the notebook

INTERVIEWER:  Do you have any advice for young writers starting out?

JAMES TATE:  No—if a writer is going to get anywhere, he doesn’t listen to anybody.

Write as if you live in an occupied country.

     —Edwin Rolfe

We’re not calling them “divorced” anymore—we’re calling them certified pre-owned spouses.
 

Still, repression’s

got a lot going for it: from the repressed mind
comes beautiful stories, whereas from the liberated mind comes
websites that show women having sex with vegetables.
      — David Kirby, “Pink is the Navy Blue of India”

 

Weepers choose the music.
     —Vera Pavlova
 

Every birth a crime, every sentence life.

     —Basil Bunting

 

I try to surround myself with people who can never disappoint high expectations.

 

We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and a mystery.

     —HG Wells

A liberated woman is a fish that has fought its way ashore.

     —Karl Kraus

The lesser of two evils: a choice that evil always demands we make, revealing itself in the demand.

     —Clive James

The dawn has to kill

A universe of stars every morning
Just to get born.

Most people are other people.

     —Oscar Wilde

The sea depends on the drop of water. 

      —Franz Kafka

Kings do not touch doors.

     —Francis Ponge

Inside is the only kind of baseball in poetry, which is why it’s so hard to keep score.

     —Michael Robbins

Nobody walks away from an argument thinking “I lost.”

A muse inspires when she comes.

A wife inspires when she leaves.
A mistress inspires when she does not come.
     —Vera Pavlova

There are two sets of principles: power and privilege, and truth and justice.  If you pursue one, it is always at the expense of the other.

     —Julien Benda


The simplest way to stop a revolution?
Give it an office in the institution. 

The opening line of a poem is like finding a piece of fruit on the ground, a piece of fallen fruit that you’ve never seen before.  The poet’s task is to create the tree from which such a fruit would fall.

     —Paul Valery

We each really only speak one sentence in our lifetime.  If you are blessed, it is heard by someone who knows you and loves you and will be sorry to hear the sentence end.

     —Ernest Fenollosa to Ezra Pound

A girl has her dreams; a boy has his fantasies.

     —Teo Pozzi

 

Every good joke must be a small revolution.
     —Peter Barnes

 

No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it.
     —Fernando Pessoa

 

 

 

Jottings from the notebook

Aim therefore at no less than all the world.

        -- Milton, Paradise Regained. (Spoken by Satan, of course.)

The earth turns over, our side feels the cold.

        -- WH Auden

The deepest trap is to think about where I haven’t been, instead of where I’m going.

“Why is it always the ones who can’t fulfill them who have the power to get your hopes up?”

“They’re your hopes; bet them on a higher number.”

The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.

-- Raymond Chandler

The harder you push it away, the tighter it clings to you.

A poet once told me that originally the poet’s job was to name the things of this world.  In a way, I am trying to name things with my emotions.

        -- Lili Taylor

The highest purpose of poetry is to keep us from listening to fools.

-- Leopold Froehlich

“He says hello like the word could unzip the back of my dress.”

That roar which lies on the other side of silence.

-- George Eliot, Middlemarch

You know you do something right when you lose something.

        -- Tift Merritt

Being creative and being marketable: a bull surrounded by barbed wire.

My weapon against the world is another vision of the world.

        -- Jorge Teillier

As a writer, I think he chews out loud.

         --- Peter DeVries

Love is the only thing we have the right to be totally selfish about.

Marriage: a minimum of temptation with a maximum of opportunity.

        (after Shaw)

Marriage: a sort of friendship recognized by the police.

        -- Robert Louis Stevenson

“I’m sorry I never got back to you.”

“But you did get back to me--silence is also a response.”

Good things always come to an end; bad things must be stopped.

        (after Kim Newman)

I only see the trail when I look back.

Disco’s Dead And You’re Next

        (one day I’ll write a thriller with this title)

New York City is the capital of a country that has no borders.

Only a banker’s wife can show you Hell.

        -- one sentence review, Dante’s Inferno.

Blondes all have something to hide, brunettes all have something to prove, and the only sane redheads are orangutans.

From the great deep to the great deep he goes.

        -- Tennyson, Idylls of the King.

“You’re like the moon.  I know you have a dark side, but the way you always face me, I can’t see it.”

My soul and the internet: a giant weighed down by snowflakes.

He who would flee from bad taste is riding for a fall.

        -- Pablo Neruda

The ones who are dead inside live the longest.

It is the second job of literature to create myth.  But its first job is to destroy that myth.

        --Kenzaburo Oe

This body where I live: my dear assassin.

When Lear is mad, he speaks prose.

        -- Joshua Mehigan

Jottings from the notebook

Whenever clouds fight, it ends in a marriage.

The mailbox's idea of travel is to swallow a letter with a foreign address.

"The truly new always looks truly wrong." *
 -- Alice Fulton

Each love obeys its own unbending law of pain.

As far as Reality is concerned, English is a second language.

"As a writer he has mastered everything except language; as a novelist he can do everything, except tell a story; as an artist he is everything, except articulate."
--Oscar Wilde on George Meredith

A fact is a lie supported by evidence.

Swimming pools wish they could close their eyes when it rains.

Love is like a cruise ship.  You leave the dock to cheers and confetti, and when you finally sail far enough away to lose all sight of land, you discover there's nobody else on the boat but you.  You're the captain and the crew, the engineer and the deck hand, the navigator and the cook.  You have to do all the work to make the cruise a success.  And if you don't watch out, you'll totally forget that you're also the passengers.

We all speak a language that will be dead someday.

Potential Country Music song title: "I'd Love To Be In Virginia, But  She Has A Husband Now."

When it comes to love, it's not the word that scares me--it's the echo.

"I'm just a red nigger who love the sea.
I have a sound colonial education.
I have Dutch, nigger, English in me
And either I'm nobody or I'm a nation."
-- Derek Walcott

I'm at that age when the barber doesn't charge me for cutting my hair--he charges me for trying to find it.

Death hibernates inside us till
the winter of our lives becomes
the spring of its awakening.

Poetry: a lightning bolt you build electron by electron.

Writing a play is like open heart surgery.  Writing a successful play is like open heart surgery where the patient lives.

The phone book is a novel about people who want to communicate.

He killed her the slow way--he married her.

"If you want a happy ending, read a cookbook."
-- Dean Young

We were put on this earth to surprise God.


*Corrected quote in the comment below.  Thanks, Shawn.
Copyright 2011 Matthew J Wells