All Quotes By Tag: Humour

“We spend a huge chunk of our lives worrying about whether or not we will eventually get the person and/or the things we need or want. Once we get them, we spend the rest of our lives worrying about whether or not we will eventually lose them.”

“We sometimes congratulate someone, not because we value or find worthy what they have just achieved, but only because we fear coming across as jealous.”

“Time tends to pass you by more quickly when you take no notice of it, my dear. In that, it’s remarkably similar to most women I know.”

“We are unable to discount the hypotheses that the world began three years ago.”

“Six a.m.!” Xander cried. “I know that’s a number on my clock, but I’ve never actually been awake to personally witness it!”

“Centuries ago, sailors on long voyages used to leave a pair of pigs on every deserted island. Or they’d leave a pair of goats. Either way, on any future visit, the island would be a source of meat. These islands, they were pristine. These were home to breeds of birds with no natural predators. Breeds of birds that lived nowhere else on earth. The plants there, without enemies they evolved without thorns or poisons. Without predators and enemies, these islands, they were paradise. The sailors, the next time they visited these islands, the only things still there would be herds of goats or pigs. Oyster is telling this story. The sailors called this “seeding meat.” Oyster says, “Does this remind you of anything? Maybe the ol’ Adam and Eve story?” Looking out the car window, he says, “You ever wonder when God’s coming back with a lot of barbecue sauce?”

“Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they’d seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it’s nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, “Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!” or “Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!”

“We could all use the power of prayer now and then, but it seems to me that the people who are sure they have a direct line to heaven are most often calling collect with bad news.”

“Look!” Hawkeye said. Duke looked where Hawkeye was pointing. In one corner, kneeling on the dirt floor with his elbows on his cot, a Bible in front of him, his lips moving slowly, and oblivious to all about him, was Major Jonathan Hobson.”Jesus,” Hawkeye said.”It don’t look like Him,” Duke said.”

“Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor.”

“A Christian telling an atheist they’re going to hell is as scary as a child telling an adult they’re not getting any presents from Santa.”

“During the Bosnian war in the late 1990s, I spent several days traveling around the country with Susan Sontag and her son, my dear friend David Rieff. On one occasion, we made a special detour to the town of Zenica, where there was reported to be a serious infiltration of outside Muslim extremists: a charge that was often used to slander the Bosnian government of the time. We found very little evidence of that, but the community itself was much riven as between Muslim, Croat, and Serb. No faction was strong enough to predominate, each was strong enough to veto the other’s candidate for the chairmanship of the city council. Eventually, and in a way that was characteristically Bosnian, all three parties called on one of the town’s few Jews and asked him to assume the job. We called on him, and found that he was also the resident intellectual, with a natural gift for synthesizing matters. After we left him, Susan began to chortle in the car. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘Do you think that the only dentist and the only shrink in Zenica are Jewish also?’ It would be dense to have pretended not to see her joke.”

“A halo is a cock ring for the soul.”

“I’m as religious as the next man – which is to say I’ll keep in with the local parson for form’s sake and read the lessons on feast-days because my tenants expect it, but I’ve never been fool enough to confuse religion with belief in God. That’s where so many clergymen… go wrong”

“It was masturbation, not willpower, that made it possible for gazillions of women to walk down the aisle with their reputation and their hymen still intact.”