quotes in naelyn's stream
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The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink, for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or wolf.
If true love shows up on your doorstep and you drive it away, that’s on you. Not the job or anything else.
TV: The Middleman
You mustn’t force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.
You read about love in books and you think you know what it’s all about, and then it happens to you and you realize you hadn’t understood anything about it at all up to that point.
Probably for every man there is at least one city that sooner or later turns into a girl. How well or how badly the man actually knew the girl doesn’t necessarily affect the transformation. She was there, and she was the whole city, and that’s that.
Short story: “A Girl I Knew”, Good Housekeeping 126, Feb 1948
Barack calls it my ‘Star Trek’ belt. He doesn’t understand fashion … He’s always asking: ‘Is that new? I haven’t seen that before.’ It’s like, Why don’t you mind your own business? Solve world hunger. Get out of my closet.
Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
If you don’t stick to your values when they’re being tested, they’re not values, they’re hobbies. You know one of the genius moves of the Founders was not writing the Bill of Rights on the back window of a dusty van.
TV: The Daily Show: 22 Jan 2009
I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.
Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.
Book: V for Vendetta
There. Is. No. Long-Term. Data. Storage. Solution. There is only a series of short-term solutions punctuated by data migration from one medium to the next.
Being an atheist doesn’t mean that life isn’t important. It means that we get to create our own sense of importance. The human scale is where we live. It’s what we have. And if we decide that that’s the most important scale for us, there’s nobody out there to tell us otherwise.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for.
A reg exp is a thing of beauty but it is not a joy forever. Instead, it makes my head hurt.
Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, “I’d like my crayons back, please.”
Romantic love is mental illness. But it’s a pleasurable one. It’s a drug. It distorts reality, and that’s the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw.
And then, something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.
Movie: Fight Club
Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot. Who calls you back when you hang up on him. Who’ll lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep… Wait for the boy who kisses your forehead, who wants to show you off to the world when you’re in sweats. Who holds your hand in front of his friends. Who thinks you’re just as pretty without makeup. One who’s constantly reminding you of how much he cares and how lucky he is to have you… The one who turns to his friends and says ‘That’s her.’
There are no secrets in life, just hidden truths that lie beneath the surface.
TV: Dexter
I find people around me are all making some kind of connection, like friendship or romance but human bonds always lead to messy complications; commitment, sharing, driving people to the airport. Besides if I let someone get that close, they’d see who I really am and I can’t let that happen. So, time to put on my mask.
TV: Dexter
Everyone hides who they are at least some of the time. Sometimes you bury that part of yourself so deeply that you have to be reminded that it’s there at all, and sometimes you just want to forget who you are altogether.
TV: Dexter
Tonight’s the night. And it’s going to happen again, and again. It has to happen. Nice night.
TV: Dexter
People fake a lot of human interactions, but I feel like I fake them all, and I fake them very well, that’s my burden, I guess.
TV: Dexter
Python is executable pseudocode. Perl is executable line noise.
Book: “Thinking in Python” by Bruce Eckel
At heart, this really is a math problem. Last time these talk shows were off the air for any length of time was after September 11th. And at that time, most shows were off for about a week. So if my math is correct, the Writer’s Strike is now nine times worse than September 11th.
TV: The Daily Show: 7 Jan 2008
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.
The future is predetermined by the character of those who shape it.
TV: Stargate: Atlantis, episode 4x08 “The Seer”
If you want to tell people the truth, make ‘em laugh; otherwise, they’ll kill you.
I burned up many chips and circuits. I discovered how electronic components work: They are full of smoke. If the smoke gets out, they don’t work anymore.
I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can’t remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world’s still there. Do I believe the world’s still there? Is it still out there?… Yeah. We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I’m no different.
Movie: memento
When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
My goal as a writer is for the player to want to see the cutscenes. Earn your audience. Forcing people to sit through your glorified fanfic is the gaming equivalent of date rape.
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3153215
Ideas rot if you don’t do something with them. I used to try to hoard them, but they rotted. Now I just blog them or tell people about them. Sometimes they still rot, but sometimes someone finds them useful in one way or another.
If it wasn’t for the Enlightenment, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. You’d be standing in a smock throwing turnips at a witch.
If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.
Debating a religionist is like playing tennis with someone who lowers the net for their shots and raises it for yours.
It is funny how people will talk of the sky falling. It really can’t fall, but at one point, people thought it could. The truth is the sky just is, and what matters is what lies under it.
A hug can turn your day around. It’s like an emotional Heimlich when someone puts their arms around you, and they give you a squeeze, and all your fear and anxiety comes shooting out your mouth in a big wet wad and you can breathe again.
TV: Pushing Daisies
The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.
Video game: Half Life 2
People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.
Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr’s death will send them straight to heaven. What a weapon! Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb.
To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise…without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But, I repeat myself.
Manuscript Note, c.1882
Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
All the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.
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