W.C. Fields

A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane . . . There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions.

Walker Evans

Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.

Krzysztof Keislowski

I'm not sure it's not better to suffer than not to suffer. I think that in order to really care about yourself, and particularly someone else, you've got to experience suffering and really understand what it is to suffer, so that you hurt and understand what it is to hurt.

David Mamet

There is nothing more pragmatic than idealism.

Jack Winter, obituary from The New York Times

[I could not figure out what to quote from this. It must be read in its entirety.]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/arts/
11wint.html?ex=157680000&en=301accf0d
53ea2db&ei=5124&partner=
permalink&exprod=permalink

Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Dirge Without Music"

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Dorothy Parker

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

Richard Powers

Why is it that ecosystems produce rich networks, while markets - including literary markets - tend to produce monocultures?