Douglas

“The Story of the Rabbit and the Eggplant

Once there was a race between a rabbit and an eggplant. Now, the eggplant, as you know, is a member of the vegetable kingdom, and the rabbit is a very fast animal.

Everybody bet lots of money on the eggplant, thinking that if a vegetable challenges a live animal with four legs to a race, then it must be that the vegetable knows something.

People expected the eggplant to win the race by some clever trick of philosophy. The race was started, and there was a lot of cheering. The rabbit streaked out of sight.

The eggplant just sat there at the starting line. Everybody knew that in some surprising way the eggplant would wind up winning the race.

Nothing of the sort happened. Eventually, the rabbit crossed the finish line and the eggplant hadn’t moved an inch.

The spectators ate the eggplant.

Moral: Never bet on an eggplant.”
― Daniel Pinkwater, Borgel

“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”
― Neal Stephenson

“I went to college, but I learned to write by reading and writing.”
― Daniel Pinkwater

“My parents believe in the principle of ‘sink or swim,’ or ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger ― or it kills you.”

From “The Education of Robert Nifkin”
― Daniel Manus Pinkwater