I've had a quote list for a long time, frequently residing on paper scraps and whiteboards and such like, sometimes in one or more text files. It's grown and shrunk over the years, and at present it's fairly small and only exists in a hard-copy version on my office wall. Kalli has, however, inspired me to start collecting again and post the results. Many of these are most meaningful in the context out of which they are, neccessarily, taken. I've noted sources where possible.
Insanity n. 1. Doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. --Anon.
I am also a bit suspicious of any theory that says the highest moral stage is one in which people talk like college professors. --James W. Wilson
Indeed, to celebrate the Black Mass, one has not only to be a Christian, but a Roman Catholic who believes in the real Mass. Otherwise, as Gerald Gardener has pointed out, one is going to a great deal of trouble to insult a piece of bread. --Doreen Valiente, An ABC of Witchcraft
The self is an orchestrator of voices. --Scott Friesner (a comment in class from my first Am Lit and Lit Crit teacher)
Magic has a habit of lying low, like a rake in the grass. --Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
The nature of identity is a loaded question for those who deviate from the mythical norm because to see identity as anything but fixed and inherent means having to defend the value of particular choices.... This is what leads people to brandish any badge of oppression they can claim, in order to trump themselves into a position of nonresponsibility for anything. Everyone becomes done-unto, never the doer. It's dangerous to rely on an identiy founded on being innocent because none of us is ever completely innocent. --Lisa Kahaleole Chang Hall, "Bitches in Solitude: Identity Politics and Lesbian Community," Sisters, Sexperts, Queers: Beyond the Lesbian Nation
If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun. --Katherine Hepburn
She woud not say, "I am this, I am that." --Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth. --Ursula K. LeGuin, "Introduction," The Left Hand of Darkness
Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use. --Emily Post (long-time queen of etiquette manuals)
I hear voices in everything. --Mikhail Bakhtin (literary critic)
Critics on the right are outraged by the implication that there is something tangled or "impossible" about such important concepts as "reality" or "truth" which they are committed to extricating from the grasp of quotation marks. --Mitchell Stephen
Our school system was invented in the late 1800s, and little has changed. Can you imagine if the medical profession ran this way? --Linda Darling
I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose rememberance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name. --Thunder Perfect Mind, 13:16-14:15 (Gnostic
text, thought to be a hymn to Sophia)
Some day soon we'll stop to ponder
What on earth's this spell we're under?
We made the grade, and still we wonder
Who the hell we are. --Styx (my personal theme for grad school)
Some will say there is safety
in numbers
Tell that myth to the edge of the herd. --Gaia Consort, "Blood,"
Secret Voices
Do you trust a creed that claims
to set you free
By spending half a lifetime begging on your knees?
Cry Freedom! We have nothing but this day. --Gaia Consort, "Cry
Freedom," Secret Voices (can be found in my music library)
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you fight with your neighbors. It makes you shoot at your landlord and it makes you miss him. --Irish proverb, courtesey of Conrad Bladey
The Harry Potter fandom is fucked up. And when a Gundam Wing fan tells you your fandom is fucked up, your fandom is fucked up. --Lys ap Adin, at an Ohayocon panel on copyright and fic
I will also miss cacti, because there's nothing in the world quite like a cactus. The only thing that looks like a saguaro is another saguaro. The only thing that looks like a prickly pear is another prickly pear. The only thing that looks like an octillo is found in deep sea trenches next to sulfer spitting vents, and lives on bioluminescent fish and irony. --Ursula Vernon, on why she will miss Arizona
Last modified: 08/23/08
First Posted 7/5/2001
© 1998-2009 Emily Ravenwood