"However: what can a respectable man talk about with the greatest of pleasure?
Answer: About himself
And so I'm going to talk about myself."

Notes from the Underground, Fedor Dostoevsky

also -

"I've got a problem."
"Women or money?"
"Both."

Money, Martin Amis

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be"

- Kurt Vonnegut "Mother Night"

“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

William Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice

"So it goes"

Kurt Vonnegut.

Fits just about any situation you can think of.

If I had a penny for every time you mentioned Kurt bloody Vonnegut on these forums I, well, I wouldn't be rich, but I'd have almost a pound I reckon....

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be"

- Kurt Vonnegut "Mother Night"

"I think, therefore I am."
- René Descartes

“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

William Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice
Good one!

"Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."
- James Joyce, final sentence of "Araby" from Dubliners.

If I had a penny for every time you mentioned Kurt bloody Vonnegut on these forums I, well, I wouldn't be rich, but I'd have almost a pound I reckon....hey, he was a brilliant man. got something wrong with that? :tongue:

'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.'
Douglas Adams

'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.'
Douglas AdamsMy god, Captain Jack Sparrow/ the writers of Pirates of the Caribbean blatantly ripped that off!

"Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex."
~ Oscar Wilde.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Keats
from "Ode on a Greician Urn"

From Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem In Memoriam

'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

I like the opening lines to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson (R.I.P):

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”

"to lose one parent, mr. worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." from the importance of being earnest

or "experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes." from lady windemere's fan

OR "every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself." and "discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation." from a woman of no importance

all by oscar wilde - the most quotable writer in literature. :D i love him.

and i agree with razy on hunter s thompson :)

the introduction to oscar acosta's 'revolt of the cockroach people' by hunter s is genius. (oscar was the samoan attorney in fear and loathing by the way)

*goes and finds book*

my favourite bit is the description of oscar:

"oscar was not into serious street fighting, but he was hell on wheels in a bar brawl. any combination of a 250-pound mexican and lsd-25 is a potentially terminal menace for anything it can reach - but when the alleged mexican is in fact a profoundly angry chicano lawyer with no fear at all of anything that walks on less than three legs and a de facto suicicdal conviction that he will die at the age of thirty-three - just like jesus christ - you have a serious piece of work on your hands. specially if the bastard is already thirty-three and a halfyears old with a head full of sandoz acid, a loaded .357 magnum in his belt, a hatchet-weilding chicano bodyguard on his elbow at all times, and a disconcerting habit of projectile-vomiting geysers of pure red blood off the front porch every thirty or forty minutes, or whenever his malignant ulcer can't handle any more tequila."

please read that, it's worth it and it took me fuckin ages to type out!

Where'd you manage to find a copy of Acosta's book? I've been after it for awhile, but can't seem to find it.

Isn't that quote from a Rolling Stones issue, as well?

Where'd you manage to find a copy of Acosta's book? I've been after it for awhile, but can't seem to find it.

Isn't that quote from a Rolling Stones issue, as well?possibly yeah. think it was written around the time acosta went missing or after. like an obituary.

i got it on amazon i think..hmm..
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Revolt-Cockroach-People-Oscar-Acosta/dp/0679722122/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198506342&sr=8-1
that's on british amazon anyay. it's a great book, one of my favourites.

I will get his books eventually, but I have a long-long reading list at the moment.:(

A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not. - Ernest Hemingway