Steve

“You’ll make twentyfive percent on your money by tomorrow noon. . . . Then if you want to hold you can on a gamble, but if you sell three quarters and hold the rest two or three days on a chance you’re safe as . . . as the Rock of Gibraltar.” “I know Viler, it certainly sounds good. . . . ” “Hell man you dont want to be in this damned office all your life, do you? Think of your little girl.” “I am, that’s the trouble.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“Deeply ambivalent also is carnival laughter itself. Genetically it is linked with the most ancient forms of ritual laughter. Ritual laughter was always directed toward something higher: the sun (the highest god), other gods, the highest earthly authority were put to shame and ridiculed to force them to renew themselves.”
― Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics

“this is a nervous little decade we’re playing with”
― Richard Fariña, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

“Let's lay it right on the line. Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today. But, unlike a team of costumed super-villains, they can’t be halted with a punch in the snoot, or a zap from a ray gun. The only way to destroy them is to expose them—to reveal them for the insidious evils they really are.”
― Stan Lee