Ford's Ever-expanding List of Selected
Favorite Quotes & Miscellaneous Ramblings...

Note:  To hear the sound samples requires appropriate audio hardware and a browser that supports sounds.  The sounds are intentionally sampled at low frequency rates to minimize size.  Sounds on this page are typically sampled as .wav files at 8 bit mono between 6000 and 11025 hz.  Newer sounds are MP3. If you have problems playing the samples, let me know.

Last updated:  September 11, 2010

In order to give an appearance of organization to this expanding list of quotes I've divided them into the following sections:
Observations relating to life...
Quotes regarding writing...
Miscellaneous ramblings... 

Quotes Relating to Life:

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking out at the stars.
-- Oscar Wilde

You pick the place and I'll choose the time /
and I'll climb that hill in my own way. (156k)
-- Pink Floyd, "Fearless"

You are a member of The Village. You are a unit of society.
-- #2, The Prisoner: "Once Upon a Time"

So you think you can tell Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain? (161k)
-- Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here"

The memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of a man in his prime. (72k)
-- Pink Floyd, "Free Four"

There is always choice. We say there is no choice only to comfort ourselves with a decision we have already made.
-- Centari prophet, "Babylon 5, Point of No Return"

Every man dies. Not every man really lives. (81k)
-- William Wallace, Braveheart

But my dreams they aren't as empty as my conscience seems to be. (104k)
-- The Who, "Behind Blue Eyes"

I'm learning to live with a lot of things.
-- Darkman, Darkman

No matter where you go, there you are. (60k)
-- Buckaroo Banzai, Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. (59k)
-- John Lennon, "Imagine"

They say there's a heaven for those who will wait /
Some say it's better but I say it ain't. (92k)
-- Billy Joel, "Only the Good Die Young" (33k)

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
-- Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) - French composer.

You shall have joy or you shall have power - but you shall not have both.
-- Emerson

You have no chance of success unless you are willing to fail.
-- Jonas Salk - inventor of the polio vaccination

Doh! (4k)
-- Homer Simpson, "The Simpsons"

To decide not to decide is a decision.  To fail to decide is a failure.
-- George Patton

An optimist thinks this is the best of all worlds.  A pessimist fears the same may be true.
-- Doug Larson

I have become comfortably numb. (56k)
-- Pink Floyd, "Comfortably Numb"

There are no secrets to success:  Don't waste time looking for them.  Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty to those for whom you work, and persistence.
-- General Colin Powell, U.S. Army

A candle looses nothing by lighting another.
-- Father James Keller (1900-1977), Founder, The Christophers

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles that one has overcome while trying to succeed.
-- Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), educator.

Self esteem is over rated. Most of the work in this country is done by people who hate themselves.
-- Walt Finnery, "Grounded for Life"

I don't go down that runway prayin'. If you go down that runway prayin', you're liable to get killed. You'd better brace yourself for what's on the other side.
-- Evel Knievel

Quotes Regarding the Writing Process:

Language is a virus...
We must find out what words are and how they function. They become images when written down, but images of words repeated in the mind and not of the image of the thing itself.
-- William S. Burroughs

If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirin, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass.
-- Lawrence Block, Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print

___The more closely the author tries to think of why he wrote, the more he comes to regard his imagination as a kind of self-generating cement, which glued his facts together and his emotions as a kind of dark and obscure designer of those facts. Always there is something that is just beyond the tip of the tongue that could explain it all. Usually, he ends up by discussing something far afield, an act which incites skepticism and suspicion in those anxious for a straight-out explanation.
___Yet the author is eager to explain. But the moment he makes the attempt his words falter, for he is confronted and defied by the inexplicable array of his own emotions. Emotions are subjective and he can communicate them only when he clothes them in objective guise; and how can he ever be so arrogant as to know when he is dressing up the right emotion in the right Sunday suit? He is always left with the uneasy notion that maybe any objective drapery is as good as any other for any emotion.
-- Richard Wright, How ‘Bigger’ Was Born

Vigorous writing is concise.  A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should contain no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.  This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects like an outline, but that every word tell.
-- William Strunk, Jr., The Elements of Style

Miscellaneous Ramblings:

I think it's time to discuss your philosophy of drug use as it relates to artistic endeavor...
-- Naked Lunch

The Zone takes care of its own.
-- Naked Lunch

I hate to hear people groan, not because of pity but because it is a very irritating sound.
-- William S. Burroughs, "Lee's Journals", Interzone

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.
-- Benjamin Desraeli

In order to find his equal, an Irishman is forced to talk to God. (70k)
-- Stephen, Braveheart

No man is so tall as he who stoops to help a child.
-- Anonymous

The human brain is a wonderful thing. It starts working the moment you are born, and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.
-- George Jessel

Intelligence has nothing to do with politics.
-- Londo, Babylon 5, "Point of No Return"

Cry 'Havoc', and let slip the dogs of war.
-- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"

Would you want to see - if seeing meant that you would have to believe in things like Heaven...?
-- Joan Osborne, "One of Us"

Not a pretty girl... but one heck of a sharpshooter.
-- Manny, "The Single Guy"

The conventional army loses if it does not win.
The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.
-- Henry Kissinger

Nothing happens in contradiction to nature -- only in contradiction to what we know of it. (62k)
-- Scully, "The X-Files"

I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it.
-- Edgar Allan Poe

There's no justice like angry mob justice.
-- Principle Skinner, "The Simpsons"

Absolute power is a sticky wicket.
-- The Tick, "The Tick"

Questions are a burden to others; answers are a prison for oneself.
-- A sign in the Labour Exchange in The Prisoner, "Arrival"

Everything looks bad if you remember it.
-- Homer Simpson, "The Simpsons"

I like to encourage intruders.
"Crazy" Joe Divola, "Seinfeld"

If they had a sponge that cleaned up broken dreams, Woolworths would still be in business.
-- Peggy Hill, "King of the Hill"

A stroke of the brush does not guarantee art from the bristles, (14k)
-- Kosh, Babylon 5, "Deathwalker"

I'd trade it all for a little more,
-- Mr. Burns, The Simpsons

You can't go this far and then not go further,
-- Homer Simpson, "The Simpsons"

We have two hands and two legs.  The important thing is how can we use them to the maximum,
-- Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee: In His Own Words

Faith and Reason, and the shoes on your feet - you can travel farther with both than you can with just one.
-- Future Monk, "Babylon 5", "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars"

They have computers, and they may have other weapons of mass destruction.
-- Janet Reno, US Attorney General, 2/27/1998

1) If you have never seen an unidentified flying object, you are very unobservant.  2) If you have seen as many as I have you won't believe in them.  3) They have nothing to do with visitors from space.  4) It is impossible to prove 3.
-- Arthur C. Clarke, Interview before release of 2001: A Space Odyssey

Trechery and treason -- there is always an excuse for it -- and when I find out the reason, I still can't get used to it.
And what have you got at the end of the day?  What have you got, they take away...
-- "Private Investigations", Dire Straits

 Change is inevitable -- except from a vending machine.
-- Unknown

Everytime you have a feeling, just stick it into a little pit inside your stomach.
-- Hank Hill, "King of the Hill"

Who among us hasn't snuck into the break room to nibble on a love Newton?
-- J. Peterman, "Seinfeld"

Trust me...
-- Sledgehammer, "Sledgehammer"

Courtesy of tongue, when it is used to veil churlishness of deed, is but a knight's girdle around the breast of a base clown.
-- Lady Rowena, "Ivanhoe"

Only one thing in the world could've dragged me away from the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window.
-- Ralphie, A Christmas Story

It's no longer a vacation, it's a quest for fun!
-- Clark Griswald, National Lampoons Vacation

You're telling me there's a poorly trained, quasi-legal police force that operates with few, if any, government controls?
It's about time.
-- Dale Gribble,"King of the Hill" - Pregnant Paws

I have never allowed my duties as a gentleman to interfere with my pleasures to the slightest degree.
-- Algernon, The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)

Wait, wait, wait! Here comes Lee Marvin! Thank God! He's always drunk and violent!
-- Homer Simpson, "The Simpsons"

When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly.
-- Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), French essayist. “Of the Education of Children,”
The Essays (Les Essais), bk. I, ch. 26, Abel Langelier, Paris (1595).

You have to expect this kind of resistance in an attempt to play God.
-- Reese, "Malcolm in the Middle"

So, you're evil, huh? Well, it's always something.
-- Die Flader Mouse, "The Tick: Evil Sits Down for a Moment"

I've come to hate my own creation. Now I know how God feels.
-- Homer Simpson, "The Simpsons: Dude, Where's My Ranch?"

 

If you have the ability to sample any of the quotes that I don't have online, please do so (.mp3 format is probably best) and e-mail them to me.

Naturally, I think The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is filled with wonderful things to say. Unfortunately, the link I had to a bunch of HHGTTG quotes is gone. Perhaps I will get around to typing some in.

Quotes link is constantly growing -- check back later...

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