"I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less."
-- Artie Shaw, 1910-2004, as quoted by John S. Wilson in The New York Times.


Image from ArtieShaw.com.

"I don't care about expensive things. Cashmere coats, diamond rings. ... Honest to God, all I care about is love."
--Jerry Orbach, 1935-2004, as Billy Flynn in the original Broadway production of Chicago.



Image from Xinhuanet.

"The waters that stole tens of thousands of people from the shorelines of Asia and East Africa on Sunday spewed their bodies back onto beaches on Tuesday, leading officials to double the death toll again to more than 57,000. Meanwhile, scores of international rescue teams arrived hoping to stave off disease and homelessness... With tens of thousands still unaccounted for, especially in remote regions, the toll seemed certain to continue climbing. Indonesia alone already estimates 27,000 dead and Sri Lanka more than 16,000, with 4,000 people missing."
-- David Rohde, The New York Times

"Christmas is here:
Winds whistle shrill,
Icy and chill,
Little care we:
Little we fear Weather without,
Sheltered about The Mahogany-Tree."
-- William Makepeace Thackeray

"'Merry Christmas' — I know those Christian-sounding words ought to feel odd coming from my lips — I'm a third-generation atheist of Jewish ancestry and I'm almost evangelical in my lack of faith. But they feel fine. 'Merry Christmas!'"
-- Blake Gopnik, as quoted by Liz Smith.


Image from EVSC.

"What do you call people who are afraid of Santa Claus? Claustrophobic."
-- Unknown

"Rudolph, with your nose so bright... Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"
-- Santa Claus


Image from Dishes, Decor, and More.

"Didn't get your bloglet today- is everything ok?"
-- Ernst Ludwig, Architect

"...if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the
science of human relationship - the ability of all peoples,
of all kinds, to live together and work together in the same
world, at peace."
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt

"I don't remember not wanting people to look at me when I walked into a room. Even before I knew what an actor was. It's a very classic case of 'It's not enough to have the love of the people that love me . . . I need the entire world to love me.'"
-- Kevin Bacon in the January issue of GQ, and quoted by Liz Smith, today.


Image from Movies-on-DVDs

"When we are ourselves, not just actors but anybody in terms of how you present yourself, how often are you completely authentic? When are you adjusting yourself slightly to the situation that you're in? Do we perform our lives?"
-- Annette Bening

"The chief problem about death, incidentally, is the fear that there may be no afterlife--a depressing thought, particularly for those who have bothered to shave."
-- Woody Allen, The Early Essays

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more
and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and
glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
-- H.L. Mencken

"If a picture wasn't going very well I'd put a puppy dog in it, always a mongrel, you know, never one of the full bred puppies. And then I'd put a bandage on its foot... I liked it when I did it, but now I'm sick of it."
-- Norman Rockwell


Image from T-Gallery.

"Sneezes are bizarre things that arrive unexpectedly, can give one a fright, and tend to spray saliva. Rather like in-laws really."
-- Vimrod

"Bloggers share stuff they have found and they provide me with a lot of links that I would never have discovered myself. They also provide comment, analysis and interpretation that is tainted only by their own prejudices, and not by the deliberate lies and distortions found in the mainstream media. In my opinion these are the two most important functions of weblogs. To share discoveries and to share opinions."
-- Roger Pollack, Eclectica

"There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste."
-- Goethe

"On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy."
-- E.B. White Here is New York.

"There is no historic preservation district or landmarks commission for hawks' nests. But if there were, the red-tailed hawk's nest at 927 Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park at 74th Street, would surely have qualified. Until Tuesday, the nest stood on a 12th-floor cornice with a sublime aerial view of the urban forest in our midst. Since 1993, 23 young hawks have been raised there, sired by a bird called Pale Male. Thousands and thousands of bird-watchers over the years have followed the lives of the hawks in that nest. But this is not an homage to bird-watching - it's an homage to birds.

"On Tuesday, workers took down the nest and, apparently, the metal anti-pigeon spikes that had helped hold it in place. So far, no one from 927 Fifth Avenue has spoken up to defend the co-op board's decision to remove the nest. Perhaps residents were annoyed that the hawks didn't do a better job of cleaning up after themselves by using a pooper-scooper or putting their pigeon bones in the trash, the way a human would. Perhaps they simply wearied of the stirring sight of a red-tailed hawk coming down out of the sky to settle on its nest.

"It's always tempting to think that a city like New York has utterly effaced the natural ground on which it was built. Most of the creatures that lived on Manhattan Island several centuries ago would stand no chance of doing so now - not in these new canyons of steel and glass. But the presence of a nesting pair of red-tailed hawks, sequestered on the edge of an apartment building, feels like a memory from a past this city has long since forgotten.

"The hawks have gone out of their way to learn to live with us. The least the wealthy residents of 927 Fifth Avenue could have done was learn to live with the hawks."

Editorial, The New York Times.


Image from PaleMaleTheMovie.com

"Hell, I'm an old man, it's early in the morning and I'm gathering my thoughts here."
-- Donald Rumsfield, yesterday, to troops inquiring about safety equipment not made available to them.

"You work for me now. Find me some clouds!"
-- Leonardo DiCaprio, as Howard Hughes, in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. As quoted by Liz Smith today.

"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; The naive forgive and forget; The wise forgive but do not forget."
-- Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (1973).


Image from New Therapist.

"You are teacher?"
"I am, yes."
"You do not look sufficient of age for scientific teaching. How many years have you?"
"Enough to know that age and wisdom do not necessarily go hand in hand, Your Majesty."
-- Anna and the King,motion picture, 1999.

”A trap is a trap only for creatures which cannot solve the problem it sets. Mantraps are dangerous only in relation to the limitations on what men can see and value and do. The nature of the trap is a function of the nature of the trapped. To describe either is to imply the other.”
– Sir Geoffrey Vickers, Freedom in a Rocking Boat.

"What a lousy earth! How many winners were losers, successes failures, rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to blackguards for petty cash, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps with an Albert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere."
-- Joseph Heller, Catch-22

"Oh come on honey. It's just the news. It's not real."
-- Craig Lucas, Reckless, a woman character to her husband who seems shaken by a television news report.

"In my experience, if enough people are waiting for something, it is bound to arrive sooner or later. Like the train, for example, or the end of the world."
-- Ragnar Tornquist

"All those Greeks were homosexuals. Boy, they must have had some wild parties. I bet they all took a house together in Crete for the summer."
-- Woody Allen, Love and Death.