Most of us, I believe, admire strength. It's something we tend to respect in others, desire for ourselves, and wish for our children. Sometimes, though, I wonder if we confuse strength with other wordslike 'aggression' and even 'violence'. Real strength is neither male nor female; but it is, quite simply, one of the finest characteristics that a human being can possess. -- Fred Rogers

The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition. -- Carl Jung

Blissful quiet, the rocking of a recent love Is both repose and anguish in my fainting dreams ~ Racter (The Policeman’s Beard is Half Constructed)

The Least Successful Defrosting Device The all-time record here is held by Mr. Peter Rowlands of Lancaster whose lips became frozen to his lock in 1979 while blowing warm air on it. "I got down on my knees to breathe into the lock. Somehow my lips got stuck fast." While he was in the posture, an old lady passed an inquired if he was all right. "Alra? Igmmlptk", he replied at which point she ran away. "I tried to tell her what had happened, but it came out sort of... muffled," explained Mr. Rowlands, a pottery designer. He was trapped for twenty minutes ("I felt a bit foolish") until constant hot breathing brought freedom. He was subsequently nicknamed "Hot Lips". -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

No one is interested in my underpants.

As far as I remember, even younger than eight, I have always been guided by reason. Not cold reason, but that which leads to the truth, to the real, and to sane Justice. ~ Albert Claude

[I plan] to see, hear, touch, and destroy everything in my path, including beets, rutabagas, and most random vegetables, but excluding yams, as I am absolutely terrified of yams... Actually, I think my fear of yams began in my early youth, when many of my young comrades pelted me with same for singing songs of far-off lands and deep blue seas in a language closely resembling that of the common sow. My psychosis was further impressed into my soul as I reached adolescence, when, while skipping through a field of yams, light-heartedly tossing flowers into the stratosphere, a great yam-picking machine tore through the fields, pursuing me to the edge of the great plantation, where I escaped by diving into a great ditch filled with a mixture of water and pig manure, which may explain my tendency to scream, "Here come the Martians! Hide the eggs!" every time I have pork. But I digress. The fact remains that I cannot rationally deal with yams, and pigs are terrible conversationalists.

A typewriter is a means of transcribing thought, not expressing it. ~ Marshall McLuhan

In America any boy may become President, and I suppose it's just one of the risks he takes. ~ Adlai Stevenson

FAX: Originally a last resort for procrastinators who missed the final Federal Express pickup; these days, an expensive way to order lunch from the pizza place around the corner.

'The Guppy' Whales have calves, Cats have kittens, Bears have cubs, Bats have bittens, Swans have cygnets, Seals have puppies, But guppies just have little guppies. -- Ogden Nash

Imagine your ideals, then make them real.

Men have their minds and women their feelings more highly developed. Either alone can give nothing. Think what you feel and feel what you think. Fusion of the two produces another force. ― George Gurdjieff

"Don't come back until you have him", the Tick-Tock Man said quietly, sincerely, extremely dangerously. They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs. They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used finks. They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used fallaron. They used betterment incentives. They used finger prints. They used the bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile. They used treachery. They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help. They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology. And what the hell, they caught him. -- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man"

love story a metadrama two at a time. "yes?" "no?" "no no?" "yes yes?" grouping and regrouping ~ Dick Higgins [NYC, Sept-Oct, 1985]

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction". --Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

A man turned off the light and went to bed. Because of this, several people died. Why? The man lives in a lighthouse; when he turned off the light, two ships crashed. For months, the man is wracked with guilt—how could he forget to keep the light on? What was he thinking? Years pass. The man moves to a small inland town. He attends group therapy regularly. At one session, he meets a widow of three years. She is beautiful in a quiet way. They get married. She never questions why he refuses to turn off the lights at night. Days become decades. They don’t have children, but they are happy together. One day, the man visits an antique shop and breaks down sobbing when he sees a ship in a bottle. He asks his wife to drive him to the ocean. She does. She knows not to ask why. They arrive. The man forgives himself. He finally forgives himself. ~ Ethan Kuperberg

Dalton Humphrey: It's very dangerous to handle something if you don't know where it's been! Red Green: Oh, really? Is that why Anne-Marie never holds your hand?

I went to Second City, where you learned to make the other actor look good so you looked good and National Lampoon, where you had to create everything out of nothing, and SNL, where you couldn't make any mistakes, and you learned what collaboration was. -- Bill Murray

I won't be talking about Bitcoin in 10 years, I can assure you that. [...] I would bet in even 5 or 6 years I'm no longer talking about Bitcoin as Treasury Secretary. -- Steven Mnuchin, United States Secretary of the Treasury; Jul 24, 2019