Michael Cole

“have great power, and everyone knows one or two.” “Even me,” Eddie said. “For instance, why did the dead baby cross the road?” “That’s dumb, Eddie,” Susannah said, but she was smiling. “Because it was stapled to the chicken!” Eddie yelled, and grinned when Jake burst into laughter, knocking his little pile of kindling apart.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“A smartass once accused me of being subtle. I decked him with a short right over the heart and an elbow in the trachea.”
― Harlan Ellison, From the Land of Fear

“I never exchanged a word with the Colonel. He has no significance at all in what happened during my stay in Oxgodby. As far as I’m concerned he might just as well have gone round the corner and died. But that goes for most of us, doesn’t it? We look blankly at each other. Here I am, here you are. What are we doing here? What do you suppose it’s all about? Let’s dream on. Yes, that’s my Dad and Mum over there on the piano top. My eldest boy is on the mantelpiece. That cushion cover was embroidered by my cousin Sarah only a month before she passed on. I go to work at eight and come home at five-thirty. When I retire they’ll give me a clock – with my name engraved on the back. Now you know all about me. Go away: I’ve forgotten you already.”
― J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country

“SEA CHANTY
I'm the Pirate Queen of the Baltic Run, and nobody fucks
with me--
And those who've tried are bones and skulls, and lie beneath
the sea.
And the little fish like messengers swim in and out their eyes,
Singing, "Fuck ye not with Gory Gnahb and her desperate
enterprise!"
I'll tangle with a battleship, I'll massacre a sloop,
I've sent a hundred souls to hell in one relentless swoop--
I've seen the Flying Dutchman, and each time we pass, he cries,
"Oh, steer me clear of Gory Gnahb, and her desperate
enterprise!”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow