"Friendship is another form of love — more passive perhaps, but full of the transmitting and acceptance of things like thunderclouds and grass and the clean granite of reality."
"Omit needless words."
— William Strunk’s Seventeenth Principle of Composition, The Elements of Style.
"To achieve something that nobody else has is my raison d’ȇtre. Everyone wants to ‘do well’ so hard that they end up being conservative, which is really a death knell for innovation."
— Masaya Matsuura, head of NanaOn-Sha, creator of PaRappa the Rapper.
"As for Mr. Sandler, I have always been interested in what he would do next, and I suppose I still am, especially if what he does next is retire."
— New York Times film critic A.O. Scott on Adam Sandler’s Jack and Jill.
(Source: The New York Times)
“It’s like I’ve always told you: if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”
"I went to a doctor, all he did was suck blood from my neck. Don’t go see Dr. Acula."
— Mitch Hedberg
"
The capital-T Truth is about life before death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
“This is water, this is water.”
"— David Foster Wallace
"I was getting to know him. He had absolute confidence in his work and in me, yet he worried incessantly about our future, how we would survive, about money. I felt we were too young to have such cares. I was happy just being free."
— Patti Smith, Just Kids
"When Masanori Murakami joined the San Francisco Giants in 1964, becoming the first Japanese-born player in the American major leagues, his English and his acquaintance with American baseball rituals were limited. Two veteran Giants, Bobby Bonds and Jim Ray Hart, fun-loving African Americans, took him aside and gave him a helpful tip about how to show respect. So the first time Murakami came to bat, he bowed to the plate umpire and said ceremoniously, “You can kiss my big black ass."
— Roy Blount, Jr., Alphabetter Juice: or, The Joy of Text
"And it’s always, always about power. (Should this have been a Rule?) Everyone has it. Not everyone knows how to express it. And high school is, institutionally and hormonally, an easy place to forget you have it, particularly since so many people are focused on establishing or abusing it. But the power people take from others is nothing next to the power that comes with simple self-acceptance, with being comfortable in your (changing) skin. It’s not just Survival of the Fit-ins. There’s room for something new."
— Joss Whedon, Dan Savage, Jack Black, et al. write exceptional pieces for Rookie Magazine about what you should know for Ninth Grade. I’d say that this advice extends way farther out into your life.
