You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night

to write.

-- Saul Bellow

Q: How do you save a drowning lawyer?

A: Throw him a rock.

Water, taken in moderation cannot hurt anybody.

-- Mark Twain

You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior executive.

A morgue is a morgue is a morgue. They can paint the walls with aggressively

cheerful primary colors and splashy bold graphics, but it's still a holding

place for the dead until they can be parted out to organ banks. Not that I

would have cared normally but my viewpoint was skewed. The relentless

pleasance of the room I sat in seemed only grotesque.

-- Pat Cadigan, "Mindplayers"

When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know who have gone

to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.

-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

You will be awarded a medal for disregarding safety in saving someone.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"

I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;

And from that full meridian of my glory

I haste now to my setting. I shall fall,

Like a bright exhalation in the evening

And no man see me more.

-- Shakespeare

You may my glories and my state dispose,

But not my griefs; still am I king of those.

-- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"

You have a strong appeal for members of your own sex.

Snow Day -- stay home.

Avoid reality at all costs.

What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working

when he's staring out the window.

You'd like to do it instantaneously, but that's too slow.

Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words

since I first called my brother's father dad.

-- William Shakespeare, "Kind John"

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.

-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

Save energy: be apathetic.

She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.

-- Mark Twain

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by

ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his

character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler

animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling

complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.

-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"