Wild Man Dan > Wild Man Dan's Quotes

“There are some things a man can’t fake, and lethality is one of them—a lapdog might learn to howl, even bare its teeth on occasion, but that don’t make it a wolf.”
― Daniel Polansky, Low Town

“don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” she began. “Are you mad? I had you last year at Lord Addington’s spring formal! We went behind his pagoda and I took you from the rear. You said I was the best you’d ever had!” The color drained from her face—clearly she didn’t find my scenario entirely implausible. Stammering an explanation she hurried off, leaving me to watch the celebration solo.”
― Daniel Polansky, Low Town

“Back then, Manhattan was the infant country”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“coffee biggins”—the last being the latest fad from France, involving the boiling of coffee rather than merely drinking it as a dissolved”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“Even the few streets with unobstructed brick sidewalks were comically narrow—just wide enough, as one chronicler put it, to accommodate “two lean men to walk abreast or one fat man alone.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“I been brought up a hatter,” he sighed, “people would have come into the world without heads.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“New York was the swing state in the upcoming presidential election—and Manhattan was the swing district in New York State. Control the city, and you controlled the 1800 presidential race.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“I don’t believe for a minute that the Ripper killed only the prostitutes we hear about—five and only five.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chasing the Ripper

“Imagine living in a time when a witness claiming to have seen you in the area of a violent crime might be all it takes to bring about your arrest. Maybe you’re sent to prison. Maybe you’re sentenced to death.”
― Patricia Cornwell, Chasing the Ripper

“Much of Hamilton’s previous two years had been spent building up an “additional army,” justified by stoking fears of a French invasion of godless radicals. That country’s revolution, Hamilton warned, exposed America to a veritable “volcano of atheism, depravity, and absurdity … an engine of despotism and slavery.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“Turing had important things to say on all of these, and he is probably best known for his wartime code-cracking, but he ought perhaps to be remembered more for his pioneering contribution to the very beginning of information technology.”
― David Boyle, Alan Turing: Unlocking the Enigma

“Positive and direct proof of fraud is not to be expected.… The nature of the thing itself, which is generally carried out in a secret and clandestine manner, does not admit of any but circumstantial evidence; and therefore, if no proof of actual fraud were allowed in such cases, much mischief and villainy would ensue, and pass with impunity. Circumstantial evidence is all that can be expected, and indeed all that is necessary to substantiate such a charge.”
― Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery

“The camorra turned the needs and rights of their fellow prisoners (like their bread or their pizzo) into favours. Favours that had to be paid for, one way or another. The camorra system was based on the power to grant those favours and to take them away. Or even to throw them in people’s faces. The real cruelty of the turnip-throwing episode is that the camorrista was bestowing a favour that he could just as easily have withheld.”
― John Dickie, Blood Brotherhoods: A History of Italy's Three Mafias

“Verily, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honour: and to many hath it proved a calamity that he died too early.   As yet had he known only tears, and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and just—the Hebrew Jesus: then was he seized with the longing for death.   Had he but remained in the wilderness, and far from the good and just! Then, perhaps, would he have learned to live, and love the earth—and laughter also!   Believe it, my brethren! He died too early; he himself would have disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age! Noble enough was he to disavow!”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None - Illustrated

“And to those who believe that adventures are dangerous, I say, try routine; that kills you far more quickly.”
― Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra

“Is he a poet? Or a genuine one? An emancipator? Or a subjugator? A good one? Or an evil one?”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None - Illustrated

“I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we've been all raised by television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't and we're slowly learning that fact. and we're very very pissed off.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Worker bees can leave.
Even drones can fly away.
The Queen is their slave.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“How everything you ever love will reject you or die. Everything you ever create will be thrown away. Everything you're proud of will end up as trash. ”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Talent must be a fanatical mistress. She's beautiful; when you're with her, people watch you, they notice. But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and she disappears for long stretches, and she has no patience for the rest of your existence; your wife, your children, your friends. She is the most thrilling evening of your week, but some day she will leave you for good. One night, after she's been gone for years, you will see her on the arm of a younger man, and she will pretend not to recognize you.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“You don't like the girl. You don't know what color eyes she has, you don't like her.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“the lonliest sound in the world is other people making love.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill

“Adam Wayne, the conqueror, with his face flung back and his mane like a lion's, stood with his great sword point upwards, the red raiment of his office flapping around him like the red wings of an archangel. And the King saw, he knew not how, something new and overwhelming. The great green trees and the great red robes swung together in the wind. The preposterous masquerade, born of his own mockery, towered over him and embraced the world. This was the normal, this was sanity, this was nature, and he himself, with his rationality, and his detachment and his black frock-coat, he was the exception and the accident - a blot of black upon a world of crimson and gold.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill

“In the beginning of the twentieth century you could not see the ground for clever men. They were so common that a stupid man was quite exceptional, and when they found him, they followed him in crowds down the street and treasured him up and gave him some high post in the State.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill

“did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god i'm glad i'm dead because death is always better than dishonor? did they say i'm glad i died to make the world safe for democracy? did they say i like death better than losing liberty? did any of them ever say it's good to think i got my guts blown out for the honor of my country? did any of them ever say look at me i'm dead but i died for decency and that's better than being alive? did any of them ever say here i am i've been rotting for two years in a foreign grave but it's wonderful to die for your native land? did any of them say hurray i died for womanhood and i'm happy see how i sing even though my mouth is choked with worms?”
― Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun

“Of course a lot of guys were ashamed. Somebody said let's go out and fight for liberty and so they went out and got killed without ever once thinking of liberty. And what kind of liberty were they fighting for anyway? How much liberty and whose kind of liberty? Were they fighting for the liberty of eating free ice cream cones all their lives or for the liberty of robbing anybody they pleased whenever they wanted to or what? You tell a man he can't rob and you take away some of his liberty. You've got to. What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It's a word like house or table or any other word. Only it's a special kind of word. A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let's fight for liberty and he can't show you liberty. He can't prove the thing he's talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it? No sir anybody who went out and got into the front line trenches to fight for liberty was a goddamn fool and the guy who got him there was a liar.”
― Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun

“Put the guns into our hands and we will use them. Give us the slogans and we will turn them into reality. Sing the battle hymns and we will take them up where you left off. Not one not ten not ten thousand not a million not ten millions not a hundred millions but a billion two billions of us all the people of the world we will have the slogans and we will have the hymns and we will have the guns and we will use them and we will live. Make no mistake of it we will live. We will be alive and we will walk and talk and eat and sing and laugh and feel and love and bear our children in tranquility and security in decency in peace. You plan the wars you masters of men plans the wars and point the way and we will point the gun.”
― Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun

“Then there was this freedom the little guys were always getting killed for. Was it freedom from another country? Freedom from work or disease or death? Freedom from your mother-in-law? Please mister give us a bill of sale on this freedom before we go out and get killed. Give us a bill of sale drawn up plainly in advance what we're getting killed for... so we can be sure after we've won your war that we've got the same kind of freedom we bargained for.”
― Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun