All the Quotes

These are all the quotes that cycle through ‘Dame Fortune.’

No matter how many books you pile on top of a dictionary, the word ‘irony’ is still in there. — Ken or David

Most things are completely obvious. — Terry

Laughter, my friends, is the best medicine. Unless you’re a diabetic; then insulin is the best medicine. — Norm McDonald

I want Bill Maher’s big, dumb vector straightened next. — Terry

I plan to use that knowledge for Evil, of course. — David

Highs will be in the mid to upper 80s tomorrow, but it will feel like your entire life has been a pointless and inexorable march into the abyss. — Brian

I think it’s high time we finish the battle of good versus evil once and for all. So we can get back to business as usual in the greatest hemisphere on earth, the WESTERN hemisphere! — David

Gravity is profound out in the mountains. Everything weighs more out there. — Terry

My comment is just an obligatory stipulation that I’m certain we all agree on, which merely arises from my need to be as obvious as possible, in order to thwart the Masons. — Terry

There’s some milk in the refrigerator that’s about to expire…and there it goes. — King of the Hill

Something is correct. Some particular how, the world was made. — Terry

Why is there a big-ass Miller Lite in my fridge? — Brian

My God, the hotdogs are quite disordered. — John Kennedy Toole

This cancer ain’t turning on my fetish for lovely creatures. — Terry, Brendan Benson

The world and I have been manufactured in such a way that it is inevitable that I will go to hell if certain people are right, and I am wrong. — Terry

God damn Time’s inexorable marching fucking forward. — Terry

Special? Well, I fucking bought them. That’s kind of special. — Brian

Dear Diary: another stellar dump. If I’d been outside at the time, clouds would have parted and a ray of light would have illuminated my ass. — Terry

We can almost pay 10 dollars online to find out where any person is within an error of fifty feet. And I see a day when we can almost pay 5 dollars. — Terry

I suspect that the reason the universe around us appears quiet and devoid of advanced civilization is because it is. — Terry

The Rapture is not a viable exit strategy. — Michael L. Weinstein and Reza Aslan

I fell out of love with my opinions a long time ago. — Brian

I’m smug, of course, but it’s not a happy smug. — Terry

The war’s been going on so long, I can’t remember if I was originally for it or against it. — Terry

If there is a God, His plan is very similar to no plan at all. — Brian, unknown

The list of things that sicken me is growing much quicker than the list of things that make me happy. — Terry

We’re in the thick of the middle of the beginning. — David

May God have mercy on your unintentionally ironic soul. — Terry

Google’s starting to scare me. Google Earth is really good. I’m going to get totally fucked up tonight and slobber on it. — Terry

These wounds I had on Crispin’s day. — Shakespeare

If we can just make it through the summer. — Terry

I used to assume things would get better as I got older. I think we all did. — Terry

California is circling the toilet bowl and, rather than quickly installing some kind of turd-saving device, the voters are squabbling about which candidate should give the handle one final push. — Eric

I was most impressed. No one else was impressed, not at all. — Iggy Pop

This is my second and last gasp. — Brendan Benson

Ah, mercury: sweetest of the transition metals. — Sealab 2021

I’d like to thank you all for nothing. — Wilco

There are no more clear days; those days are gone. — Terry

Give a cannibal a fish, and he’s fed for a day. Give a cannibal a fisherman, and he’s fed for a week. — Terry

Here’s an optical illusion you can try at home. Take a pencil and make a small black dot in the middle of an ordinary piece of paper. Cover your left eye and stare at the dot from a distance of about two inches. You will see the Battle of Chancellorsville. — George Carlin

It is early in November of 1942 and a simply unbelievable amount of shit is going on, all at once, everywhere. — Neal Stephenson

Any intelligent entity from Arcturus would instantly have perceived them to be, basically, a race of impassioned after-dinner speech-makers. — Walter M Miller

We bury your dead and their reputations. We bury you. We are the centuries. — Walter M Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz

You could have done anything, if you wanted
And all your friends and family think that your lucky
But the side of you they’ll never see,
is when you’re left alone with the memories that hold your life together, like glue. — The The

And they had been crucified anyhow. Without dignity. Always for anybody anyhow is to get nailed on it and hang on it and if you drop off they beat. — Walter M Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz

Would a sign from Heaven slither? An omen or a portent might. The Psalmist’s negotium perambulans in tenebris might. A sidewinder might.

The slithering stopped suddenly. Was it right behind him? Really, Lord, a sign isn’t absolutely essential. Really, I. . . — Walter M Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ask for an omen, then stone it when it comes–de essentia hominum. — Walter M Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz

The rascals will always miss Nero. — Tacitus, The Histories

He was nothing but a collection of empty events that would end as a faded photograph above his parents’ fireplace. — Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn

Child labor is illegal in America. You have communist unions and crazy liberals to thank for that. — David Cross, I Drink for a Reason

Books no longer have the power they once did. Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow — Elie Wiesel, Night

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. — Elie Wiesel, Night

There was an air about the last few sentences, rather out of keeping with the rest, which caused me to suspect I had encountered some kind of creed. — John Wyndham, The Chrysalids

Nothing funny about it. Call it banal if it makes you feel better but evil’s evil. — China Mieville, Kraken

“You’re not supposed to smoke in here.”
“And yet, eh?” she said. “And fucking yet.” — China Mieville, Kraken

“I imagine,” Billy said, “Paul would have disagreed strongly with those who proposed the motion that his incarceration or death were the least bad option. I bet he’d have strongly seconded those who leaned toward not that.” — China Mieville, Kraken

This is how it is with insomnia. Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. — Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club: a novel

After that the blood began to flow. Wet, red blood in enormous quantities, for Varney was a big man, and he had been keeping it all inside. — Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

Someday, he thought, it’ll be mandatory that we all sell the McDonald’s hamburger as well as buy it; we’ll sell it back and forth to each other forever from our living rooms. That way we won’t even have to go outside. — Philip K Dick, A Scanner Darkly

She had objected to his filling out his reports late at night instead of thrilling at the very sight of her. — Philip K Dick, A Scanner Darkly

By the way, when one of those TV newsmen on MSNBC recently tried to get his co-anchor lady to react to some juicy celebrity rumor, she said to him, “I am so not going there.” And I thought, “Why am I allowing a person like this to bring me the news?’ — George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops

Whenever you hear the phrase zero tolerance, remember, someone is bullshitting you. — George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops

Waterhouse makes a circuit of the room, pretending to care about the paintings. The biggest one depicts a number of bruised and lacerated Romans dragging their sorry asses up onto a rocky and unwelcoming shore as splinters of their invasion fleet wash up around them. — Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

It seems like a strange way to kill people. Shaftoe’s not sure if he approves of everything that is implied by this U-boat. — Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

And so for these guys, the war comes down to being sealed up in an airtight drum full of shit and turning valve-wheels and throwing switches on command, and from time to time maybe some officer comes back and tells them that they just killed a bunch of guys. — Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

But crude and clever is intolerable; this is what makes those redheaded ape-men extra double super loathsome. — Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

The locals have installed flower boxes around the pier, and all of them are abloom with some sort of pre-Cambrian decorative cabbage. The effect is not exactly cheerful, but it does give the place a haunted Druidical look, as if Waterhouse is looking at the northwesternmost fringe of some cultural tradition from which a sharp anthropologist might infer the existence of actual trees and meadows several hundred miles farther south. — Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

In war, no matter how much you plan and prepare and practice, when the big day actually arrives, you still can’t find your ass with both hands. — Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

All of these countries are burning resources at a fantastic rate to get their economies stoked up, gambling that they’ll be able to make the jump into hyperspace—some kind of knowledge economy, presumably—before they run out of stuff to sell and turn into Haiti. — Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

Fat heard in her rational tone the harp of nihilism, the twang of the void. He was not dealing with a person; he had a reflex-arc thing at the other end of the phone line. — Philip K Dick, Valis

One of God’s greatest mercies is that he keeps us perpetually occluded. — Philip K Dick, Valis

There’s a photo of her funeral wreaths in my photo album. It’s a color photo so you can see how lovely the wreaths are. — Philip K Dick, Valis

Fat had to die, or nearly die, to be cured. Or nearly cured. — Philip K Dick, Valis

After all, no man is infinitely strong; for every creature that runs, flies, hops or crawls there is a terminal nemesis which he will not circumvent, which will finally do him in. — Philip K Dick, Valis

A cancer patient in remission, then, represents a stepped-up case of the status of all humans; eventually you are going to die. — Philip K Dick, Valis

Someone is playing a board game with time, someone we can’t see. It is not God. — Philip K Dick, Valis

The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them. — Philip K Dick, Valis

In seeing Christ in a vision I correctly said to him, ‘We need medical attention.’ — Philip K Dick, Valis

‘What exists,’ David said, ‘is God and the Will of God.’ ‘I hope I’m in his will,’ Kevin said. ‘I hope he left me more than one dollar.’ — Philip K Dick, Valis

Too much medication, I said to myself, remembering Paracelsus, is a poison. This man has been healed to death. — Philip K Dick, Valis

“Why did my cat die?” Answer: “Damned if I know.” There is no answer; there is only a dead animal that just wanted to cross the street. We’re all animals that want to cross the street only something mows us down half-way across that we never saw. — Philip K Dick, Valis

We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat . . . We are in the midst of a disaster of the first magnitude. The road down the Danube . . . the road to the Black Sea has been opened . . . All the countries of Mittel Europa and the Danube valley, one after another, will be drawn in the vast system of Nazi politics . . . radiating from Berlin . . . And do not suppose that this is the end. It is only the beginning . . .

But Churchill was not in the government and his words went unheeded. — Winston Churchill, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Something coming back from the dead was almost always bad news. Movies taught me that. For every one Jesus you get a million zombies. — David Wong, John Dies at the End

Let us imagine a coming generation with such intrepidity of vision, with such a heroic penchant for the tremendous. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes when you’re burying a guy alive, for a moment or two you start feeling sorry for him. And then it passes, and you keep on shovelling. — George Carlin, Napalm and Silly Putty

That’s the whole secret of life. Life is a series of dogs. — George Carlin, Napalm and Silly Putty

It was difficult to imagine her raising a child of her own, and chilling to realize that she had. — David Sedaris, Naked

You canʹt brace yourself for famine if youʹve never known hunger; it is foolish even to try. — David Sedaris, Naked

The middle way is no way at all. If we finally fail in this great and glorious contest, it will be by bewildering ourselves in groping for the middle way. — John Adams

Quality of leadership in any revolution is difficult to assess by any criterion other than the eventual outcome. — JH Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830

Okay, then if it’s a hysterical pregnancy I’ll get a hysterical abortion and pay for it with hysterical money. — Philip K Dick, A Scanner Darkly

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable. In action how like an angel; In apprehension how like a god. — Shakespeare, Hamlet

It goes without saying that a God is someone who knows how to be huge and punctual. — Terry

‘Homeland.’ I’m not comfortable living in a country that has a pet name for itself. — Terry

30 seconds isn’t long at all unless your lungs are somehow involved. — Terry