Category Archives: Quotes

As every second post on this site is a quote. You’ll find a deep and broad variety of quotes under this category, which overlap with several other tags and categories. Many of the quotes are larded with links for deeper reading on the subject of the quote, or connections between the subject of the quotes and other people, things, or ideas. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

“A film (1991) directed by by Jon Avnet and with a screenplay by Fannie Flagg, adapted from her own novel. Evelyn Couch, a middle-aged housewife, finds inspiration in the story told her by Ninny Threadgoode, an octogenarian lady in an old folk’s home. Her story from her youth concerns a relative, Idgie Threadgoode, an early feminist, who many years before had run the cafe in Whistle Stop, Alabama. Idgie rescues her friend Ruth from an abusive marriage, and Ruth joins her at the cafe, cooking such Southern delights as Fried Green Tomatoes.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

Rotten Rejections: The Great Days by John Dos Passos

“I am rather offended by what seems to me quite gratuitous passages dealing with sex acts and natural functions.”

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

Optical Mixing

“The involuntary mixing of juxtaposed colors by the eye and brain. Thus, at a certain distance, juxtaposed dabs of red and yellow pigment produce the sensation of orange. The colors seen by optical mixing appear clearer and more brilliant than those obtained by mixing colors on a palette.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

Anagram

“The rearrangement of the letters in a word or phrase to make another word or phrase. Anagrams are a common feature of crossword puzzles and are sometimes used by authors to conceal proper names. Drab is an anagram of bard; the name of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) is an anagram of nowhere.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Rotten Reviews: Ulysses by James Joyce

“I finished Ulysses and think it is a misfire…. The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious but in the literary sense. A first rate writer, I mean, respects writing too much to be tricky.”

Virginia Woolf, in her diary

“That the book possesses literary importance, except as a tour de force, is hard to believe. If we are to have the literature of mere consciousness there are numerous examples from the later Henry James to Virginia Woolf which import to consciousness a higher intrinsic value and achieve the forms of art.”

Springfield Republican reviewing the American edition 1934

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

Term of Art: Gerund

“A traditional term for a VERBAL NOUN, in English a word ending in –ing: visiting in They appreciate my visiting their parents regularly. Like a noun, it can be introduced by the genitive my (compare I visit their parents). Some object to the non-genitive usage and avoid at least for names and pronouns, preferring They appreciate Bill’s visiting their parents to They appreciate Bill visiting their parents and They appreciate my visiting their parents to They appreciate me visiting their parents.”

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

The Algonquin Wits: Heywood Broun Completes a Questionnaire

“One morning, finding a self-analysis questionnaire on his desk, Broun included some of the questions in that day’s column:

What is my occupation? Newspaperman.’

‘Am I making a success of it? There seems to be a decided difference of opinion.’

What is my character and reputation? Unreliable and charming.’

What do other men think of me? Unreliable.’

What do I think of myself? Charming.’

Am I cleanly? Very much so in the summer.’

‘Punctual? No.’

Courteous? To a fault.

Have I any object in life? Yes, I want to be a writer.’

‘Am I on my way? Not precipitately.'”

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

Wee Willie Keeler on Where to Hit the Ball

“Hit ’em where they ain’t.”

William Henry “Wee Willie” Keeler (U.S. baseball player, 1872-1923)

Quoted in Brooklyn Eagle, 29 July 1901

Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

William Empson on Ambiguity

“The intentional or unintentional expression of a word or idea that implies more than one meaning and usually leaves uncertainty in the reader. William Empson, in his Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), outlined and defined seven different kinds of verbal nuance. He maintained that language functioning with artistic complexity connotes as much and often more than it denotes.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Aegean Art

“Collective term for the art of a variety of ancient cultures (ca. 2800 B.C. to ca. 1400 B.C.) on the islands and along the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The most important were Cycladic, Minoan (on the island of Crete), and Mycenaean (on the coast of mainland Greece).”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.