Jim Crocker > Jim's Quotes

“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.”
― Eugene Ionesco

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]”
― John Rogers

“If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.”
― Stephen Colbert

“Here, in this quiet place we own, worlds are born.
~Run the Voodoo Down~”
― Cassandra Wilson

“We're like America's little pit bull. They beat it, starve it, mistreat it, and once in a while they let it out to attack somebody.”
― Evan Wright, Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War

“The incompetent leading the unwilling to do the unnecessary”
― Evan Wright

“What’s the biggest problem facing teenagers today? Ourselves. We’re a generation of lazy underachievers who need to learn that hard work pays off. What’s your town known for? Cow manure! Hold for laughs... Actually Irondale is the setting of Fannie Flagg’s famous novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. Why’d you enter the Junior Miss Birmingham pageant? To win... to go to State... then Nationals... maybe get the hell out of Alabama.”
― Nadria Tucker, The Heaviest Corner on Earth

“Now that I am dead, I know everything.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.”
― Herbert Marcuse

“In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.”
― Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“Creativity needs time. We’re all dying. Fuck stagnation. High-five creation.”
― Chuck Wendig

“Sooner or later everyone behaves badly. Some of us are just better at it than others.”
― Kim Foster, A Beautiful Heist

“Because when it comes to memories, what counts is not accuracy, but the feelings they call up.”
― Vincent Zandri, The Innocent

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“there are men in politics whose greatest aim is to look exalted in their own eyes.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all was smoking crack.”
― Kait Nolan, Red

“In Ireland, you go to someone's house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you're really just fine. She asks if you're sure. You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don't need a ting. Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn't mind a spot of tea, at that, so long as it's no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting.

In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don't get any damned tea.

I liked the Irish way better.”
― C.E. Murphy, Urban Shaman

“Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“She reached below the seat, where she’d stashed the little revolver. “You’ll feel better having it,” Charlie had said. Suddenly she did.”
― Gwen Florio, Dakota

“In my world, people are always plotting. You
have no idea of all the crimes people in business commit every
day. Like it was nothing. Or there’s a set of special rules for them.
Remember when Bush made that whole speech about ‘corporate
ethics’ last year? What a fraud. You think stuff like Enron or
WorldCom is an aberration? It’s only the tip. Business is a religion.
Probably the only one practiced all over the world.”
― Andrew Vachss, Down Here

“Life is a fight, but not everyone’s a fighter. Otherwise, bullies would be an endangered species.”
― Andrew Vachss, Terminal

“Saul was hunched over his drink like it was a small fire.”
― James Swain, Sucker Bet

“Her thoughts speed up and become less rational; her mind makes fantastic leaps. It's not that things don't make sense to her when she's like this — sometimes they make 'more' sense. They make sense the way dreams do. It's only when the dream is over that you see how odd it all was, how it actually didn't make sense at all.”
― Shari Lapena, The Couple Next Door

“The wife is always the last to know, right?”
― Shari Lapena, The Couple Next Door

“The house came with a set of Pugs, which are sort of a cross between Peter Lorre and a bratwurst.”
― Becky Masterman, Rage Against the Dying

“It's hard to recognize the devil when his hand is on your shoulder.
That's because a psychopath is just a person before he becomes a headline.”
― Becky Masterman, Fear the Darkness

“Don't let hope make you stupid.”
― Stephenie Meyer, The Chemist