Gwendolyn Post: "Faith, do you know who the Spartans were?"
Faith: "Wild stab -- a bunch of guys from Spart?"
-- "Revelations" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Remember when we all went out to fire island
You thought you saw a body on the beach
When we got closer it was just a tire
And you were disappointed i could see
So i pretended
And now i'm in pretty deep, pretty deep, pretty deep
from Tanya Donelly's "Pretty Deep"

"Frah-Jee-Lay... it must be Italian!"
"I think that says 'fragile', honey."
Darren McGavin and Melinda Dillon, A Christmas Story, 1983.

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
-- Scrooge 18something.

Come on man, if I say this is my car you know this is my car, you just get yourself another one, if I say we in on this Ripley shit, we in on it, with or without your punk ass, and if I say you gonna walk up in this house and do this motherfucker so I can see if you got any balls or not: guess what else you gonna do? -- Don Cheadle, Out of Sight, 1998.

George: Did ya ever get the feelin' like ya had a haircut, but ya didn't have one? I'm all itchy back here!
Jerry (sighs and rubs back of neck): Ahhhhh...
George: What?
Jerry: What... what are we doing?... what in God's name are we doing?
George: WHAT?
Jerry: What -- what kinda lives are these? We're like children. We're not men.
George: No, we're not. We're NOT men.
Jerry: We're pathetic, you know that?
George: Yeah, yeah, like I don't know that I'm pathetic.

"The ashtray says, you were up all night..."
A Shot in the Arm, Wilco, 1999.

"Our audience is like people who like licorice. Not everyone likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice." -- Jerry Garcia, of the Grateful Dead, From the Red Vines website.

I started to watch Girl, Interrupted last night and fell asleep in about 5 minutes...then had a dream that Winona Ryder died and woke up sad.
-- P. C. Rooks

"I don't believe there's any law against taking a cab while intoxicated."
-- Sam Waterston as Jack McCoy, "Law & Order"

"Why do you drink so much?"
"I drink to forget."
"To forget what?"
"I don't know, I forgot that long time ago..."
-- Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, the Sands, the wee small hours of, early 1960s

"I was forced to use this copy, this may be the worst TV show of all time: "To boost depressed ratings, order the new medical drama about the good-hearted, country doctor forced to make his way as he struggles to save lives in the "Big Apple". Billy Ray Cyrus stars in this season's tear-jerker, DOC." Can't wait. My TV will be all achy-breaky after I smash it against the wall."
-- Duffy Culligan, 12.13.00.

"He's always been lacking in moral fiber."
"He knows a lot about Sean Connery."
"That's hardly a substitute."
-- Trainspotting, 1996.

"Again he felt a twinge of conscience. Then he thought that they would have more fun without him, as Inga's brother always took Martin Beck's presence as an excuse to bring out the liquor and get drunk. Inga's brother in a sober state was certainly nothing much to write home about and drunk he was almost unbearable. He had, however, one positive feature and that was that on principle he never drank alone. Martin Beck's thoughts continued in that direction and arrived at the conclusion that he was really doing a good deed by lying and staying at home, as his absence would force his brother-in-law to remain sober."
-- Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall, The Fire Engine That Disappeared, 1969/1970.

"The smoke from Martin Beck's cigarettes and Hammar's cigar lay like fog over the room, and Kollberg had added to the air pollution by lighting a bonfire of dead matches and empty cigarette cartons in the ashtray. Ronn worsened the situation even more by opening the window and letting in the most polluted city air in the whole of northern Europe. Martin Beck coughed...
... The telephone rang. Kollberg stretched out his hand for the receiver and simultaneously put an empty matchbook onto the glowing heap in the ashtray."
-- Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall, The Fire Engine That Disappeared, 1969/1970.

"'Renault CV-4,' Kollberg said. 'Porsche designed it while the French kept him prisoner as a war criminal. They shut him up in the gatekeeper's house at the factory. There he sat designing. Then, I think, he was acquitted. The French made millions out of that car.'"
-- Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall, The Laughing Policeman, 1968/1970.

"A motorcycle gives no protection. Only the skin envelops your life, the merest touch of a car or a lamppost and your leg is gone, your shoulder crushed or your skull split."
-- Janwillem van de Wetering, Outsider in Amsterdam, 1975

"'We can try to find out what happened to her and the children. Maybe Columbia Forrest was his daughter.'
'But you know what the situation was up there,' Boyer protested. 'That would be incest.'
'It's happened before,' Guild said gravely. 'That's why they've a name for it.'"
-- "The First Thin Man," Dashiell Hammett, 1930. NOTES: This is from a new found early version of Hammett's The Thin Man: "Hammett wrote these ten chapters in 1930, some three years before he wrote and published The Thin Man. Althought the story line of these chapters bears clear similarities to that of the novel, when published the latter was a completely rewritten work. The style in this roughly first fifth of a novel is much more akin to the hard-edged work Hammett published in Black Mask (magazine). And Nick and Nora Charles do not appear here. Anyway, I started watching The Thin Man again and then it's sequel. In the sequel there started some dialog and I was like "I just heard that... where?" and then I remembered it was in that first version that I just read. Hammett wrote the screenplay for the sequel and I guess he went back for a scene he liked.

"'Thanks,' Guild said, and reached for his hat, but both the others began questioning him then, so they sat there and talked and smoked and drank beer until midnight was past."
-- "The First Thin Man," Dashiell Hammett, 1930.

"'... Now as I understand it, your husband was shot on Pine Street, between Leavenworth and Jones, at about three o'clock Tuesday morning. That right?'"
-- "Death on Pine Street," Dashiell Hammett, c. 1923 -1926. This is included here because Pine at Leavenworth and Jones is about two blocks from where I live.

"'Do all the talking you want, but do what I tell you.'"
-- "Two Sharp Knives," Dashiell Hammett, 1934.

"A man should be rugged like Steve McQueen; the way he stands, like he's ready for something. Or he should be a man of the world like Dean Martin."
-- Maureen McCormick as Marcia Brady, The Brady Bunch, 1969-1974.

"Gotta go ship some crap to crappy stores so they can sell the crap to their crappy customers, so people can bring it back to their crappy homes, and think their crappy lives can somehow become better if they have more crap. Later."
-- Duffy Culligan, 10.30.00.

"... What is it now?" (Hjelm)
"Just a ballistic checkup." (Martin Beck)
"Just? And which one, if I may ask? Any lunatic can send us something. We've heaps of objects under study here and no one to study them. The other day we received a toilet bucket from Melander. He wanted to know how many different individuals had shat in it. It was full to the brim, certainly hadn't been emptied for a couple of years." (Hjelm)
"Not very nice." (Beck)
-- Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall, The Locked Room, 1973.

"Amsterdammers have a habit of disposing of used bicycles, and other non-perishable items by throwing them in the nearest canal."
-- Baantjer, DeKok and the Corpse on Christmas Eve, 1975.

"'I once had a friend who was a sculptor and whose unerring appreciation of form was almost uncanny. Then, all of a sudden, out of pity he married an ugly, elderly hunchback. I don't know exactly what happened, but one day, soon after their marriage, they packed two little suitcases, one for each, and went on foot to the nearest lunatic asylum.'"
-- Rex in Vladimir Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark, 1938.

"No matter how important the subject under discussion, he could always find something witty or trite to say about it, supplying exactly what his listener's mind or mood demanded..."
-- about Rex in Vladimir Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark, 1938.

Scandinavia is a crazy place, of course. The suicide rate is off the chart...
-- Harlan Kennedy's Cannes Review, in Film Comment, Sep/Oct 2000.

"Forget it Jake... It's... Chinatown."
-- Joe Mantell, Chinatown, 1974.

"...in spite of the fact that he didn't know her very well, he thought a great deal of her. She was shrewd, and down to earth, and dedicated to her job. That was a lot to say about someone."
-- Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall's Martin Beck, Roseanna, 1965.

"I didn't answer the phone. It rang twice. I couldn't think of anyone I wanted to have a conversation with."
-- John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee, The Lonely Silver Rain, 1985.

"In the lounge I got Wisner into the big chair and Torbell onto the curved yellow couch. I brought the desk chair closer and sat in it, thus making myself a foot taller than they were. If you suspect someone wishes to give you a hard time, never arrange yourself so that he or she can look down at you."
-- John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee, The Lonely Silver Rain, 1985.

"Dying is easy, comedy is difficult" -- Edmund Gwenn (Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street) on his death bed, 1959.

*Variant version: "Yes, it's tough, but not as tough as doing comedy."
When asked if he thought dying was tough. -- Edmund Gwenn, actor, d. September 6, 1959.

"She's one of those wives who can watch a man commit murder and feel nothing. Nothing but her own moral superiority. Her whole life's been devoted to covering up. Her motto is save the surface and you save all."
-- The Blue Hammer, Ross MacDonald, 1976.

"There are certain families whose members should all live in different towns -- different states, if possible -- and write each other letters once a year."
-- Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer, The Blue Hammer, 1976.

"Like, some of these other Tankers I knew used to swap bottles of liquor with infantrymen in exchange for prisoners, and then just shoot 'em for fun. I used to say, 'Goddamn it, will you stop shooting those prisoners!' And they would just shrug and say, 'Hell, they'd shoot us if they caught us!' Which was true, they used to shoot any Tankers they captured. So that sort of behavior became normal to them, and I used to wonder, 'What's gonna happen to these guys when they go back into civilian life? How are they gonna act?' You can't just turn it off and go to work in a 7-11. If you're good with weapons or something in the Army, you're naturally gonna do something with weapons when you get out, whether it's being a cop or a criminal. These guys learned to do all sorts of things in the Army that just weren't considered normal by civilian standards."
-- writer, Charles Willeford, 1919-1988.

"Damn, woman!"
-- Paul Winfield in Catfish in Black Bean Sauce, 2000.

"I don't need marked cards to beat you, pal." -- Steve McQueen, The Cincinnati Kid, 1965.

"So you're the private detective, Jake Blake-- " His voice was shaking with an anger that was barely under control.
"Yes, sir," I said carefully, and I got up from the couch. "You must be Mr. Weintraub..." I stuck my hand out to shake hands, but he ignored it completely and turned to snarl at Florence.
"Go to your room!" He told her fiercely.
"Fuck yourself," she remarked quietly and wandered over to the fireplace.
-- Wild Wives, Charles Willeford, 1956.

What's the joy in going too fast?
"Too fast? Liberation."
Liberation from what?
"Going too slow."
Rolling Stone, August 31, 2000, Chris Heath asking Keanu Reeves why he rides a motorcycle.

"If you want a cigarette," I said, pushing the pack toward her, "take one. When you drag mine down a quarter of an inch that way, I finish the cigarette unsatisfied because I didn't have the exact ration of smoke I'm accustomed to. Then, because I feel gypped out of a quarter inch, I light another one, only to find that an entire cigarette, smoked too soon after the one I just finished, is too much. I butt it, replace it in the pack, and when I finally get around to lighting the butt the next time I want a smoke, it tastes too strong and it still isn't a regular-length smoke. If I throw the butt away, with only a couple of drags gone, it's a waste..." -- Charles Willeford, The Burnt Orange Heresy, 1971.

Movieline, August 2000:
Michael Kaplan: Of the models who've made the transition to acting, to whom do you look up?
Amber Valletta: Andie MacDowell and Rene Russo are really good. Cameron Diaz and Charlize Theron are great, too. I think it's really funny, this model/actress thing. What if I was a waitress? Would it matter to anybody?

"We believe there is nothing more precious than the privilege of serving the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, our commitment must be anchored in the infallible Word of God - The Holy Bible. The responsibility we bear in carrying the message of the Gospel is recognizably great, and made greater still as we attempt to bring the reality of Jesus Christ as Lord and God to children needing to understand His grace, care, and love... May the Lord Bless You, Willie Aames."

Patrick Dempsey: Do you want to have this conversation with a polygraph?
David Arquette: Is that a threat, detective?
Patrick Dempsey: When it's a threat, you'll know it.
David Arquette: ...Is THAT a threat!?!
--Scream 3, 2000

"You're being charming, reasonable and very boyish. Unless you've changed, that means you're about to drink someone's blood." -- Bette Davis, June Bride, 1948

And you open the door and you step inside
we're inside our hearts
now imagine your pain is a white ball of healing light
that's right, your pain
the pain itself
is a white ball of healing light--

I don't think so.

This is your life,
good to the last drop.
Doesn't get any better than this.
This is your life
and it's ending one minute at a time
This isn't a seminar,
and
this isn't a weekend retreat,
where you are now,
you can't even imagine what the bottom will be like.

Only after disaster can we be resurrected
It's only after you've lost everything that
you're free to do anything.
Nothing is static.
Everything is evolving
Everything is falling apart.

This is your life,
This is your life,
This is your life,
This is your life,

Doesn't get any better than this

This is your life,
This is your life,
This is your life,
This is your life,

And it's ending one minute at a time.

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
You are the same decaying, organic matter as everything else.
We are all part of the same compost heap.
We are the all-singing,
all-dancing,
crap of the world.

You are not your bank account.
You are not the clothes you wear.
You are not the contents of your wallet.
You are not your bowel cancer.
You are not your grand? latt?.
You are not the car you drive.
You are not... your fucking... khakis.

You have to give up.
You have to give up.
You have to realize that someday you will die.
Until you know that,

you
are
useless.

I say: let me never be complete.
I say: may I never be content.
I say: deliver me from Swedish furniture.
I say: deliver me from clever art.
I say: deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth.
I say: you have to give up.
I say: evolve, and
let the chips fall where they may.

This is your life,
This is your life,
This is your life,
This is your life,

It doesn't get any better than this.

This is your life,
This is your life,
This is your life,
This is your life,

And it's ending one minute at a time.

You have to give up.

You have to give up.

(I want you to hit me as hard as you can)
(I want you to hit me as hard as you can)

Welcome to fight club.
If this is your first night,

You have to fight.

--Tyler Durden, 1999.

Old: Interpreted by tedstrong.com. "I say: deliver me from cover art." may be incorrect. I am not sure of "cover art". It may be "clever art." If you can help me on this please email me. New: Troy Aker told me they thought it was "clever art" so I changed it.

"If you don't like [my work], understand this: Attendance is not compulsory." -- Bruce Willis, May 19, 1995.

"All of them are straight bitches." -- Dr. Dre on the women's groups that protested his 1993 album, The Chronic, for being misogynistic and violent, 12-31-93.

"I wanted to come out nude in a hot tub scene and I was ready to do it, but Altman said that it just didn't seem right. I would have been proud to do it. Look at my hands, look at my feet. They're gigantic. Everything is in proportion." -- Matthew Modine, on appearing nude in Robert Altman's Short Cuts.

"Jay and I are not friends... And I'm gonna treat him like we treated the kid on the high school basketball team who was the coach's son... We tried to kick his ass, and that's what I'm going to do -- kick Jay's ass." -- Arsenio Hall, April 17, 1992.

"The situation was intolerable; darkness would change the situation, however slightly, therefore darkness was desirable."
Dashiell Hammett, from the short story "Ruffian's Wife" (1925).

"Bette Midler is very stupid. She's not a bad person, but stupid in terms of gray matter. I mean I like her, but I like my dog, too."
-- James Caan, on his For the Boys co-star, August 21, 1992.

"The wise always use a number of ready-made phrases (at the moment I write 'nobody's business' is the most common), popular adjectives (like 'divine' or 'shy-making'), verbs that you only know the meaning of if you live in the right set (like 'dunch'), which give a homely sparkle to small talk and avoid the necessity of thought. The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried this device to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment's reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication."
-- W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale, 1930.

"She knew what bothered her at the store. It was the sort of thing she wouldn't try to tell Richard. It was that the store intensified things that had always bothered her, as long as she could remember. It was the pointless actions, the meaningless chores that seemed to keep her from doing what she wanted to do, might have done--and here it was the complicated procedures with moneybags, coat checkings, and time clocks that kept people even from serving the store as efficiently as they might--the sense that everyone was incommunicado with everyone else and living on an entirely wrong plane, so that the meaning, the message, the love, or whatever it was that each life contained, never could find its expression. It reminded her of conversations at tables, on sofas, with people whose words seemed to hover over dead, unstirrable things, who never touched a string that played. And when one tried to touch a live string, looked at one with faces as masked as ever, making a remark so perfect in its banality that one could not even believe it might be subterfuge. And the loneliness, augmented by the fact one saw within the store the same faces day after day, the few faces one might have spoken to and never did, or never could. Not like the face on the passing bus that seems to speak, that is seen once and at least is gone forever." -- Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt.