Famous Funny Quotes

And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.

Here's why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot talk, so I listen very well. I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. It's like being a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street. For instance, if we met at a party and I wanted to tell you a story about the time I needed to get a soccer ball in my neighbor's yard but his dog chased me and I had to jump into a swimming pool to escape, and I began telling the story, you, hearing the words "soccer" and "neighbor" in the same sentence, might interrupt and mention that your childhood neighbor was Pele, the famous soccer player, and I might be courteous and say, Didn't he play for the Cosmos of New York? Did you grow up in New York? And you might reply that, no, you grew up in Brazil on the streets of Tres Coracoes with Pele, and I might say, I thought you were from Tennessee, and you might say not originally, and then go on to outline your genealogy at length. So my initial conversational gambit - that I had a funny story about being chased by my neighbor's dog - would be totally lost, and only because you had to tell me all about Pele. Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories.

Ever since my famous battle with Python, I've had a phobia of scaly reptilian creatures. (Especially if you include my stepmother, Hera. BOOM!)

It’s a training camp,” Leo realized. He looked at Aphros in awe. “You train heroes, the same way Chiron does?” Aphros nodded, a glint of pride in his eyes. “We have trained all the famous mer-heroes! Name a merhero, and we have trained him or her!” “Oh, sure,” Leo said. “Like…um, the Little Mermaid?

You know, fame is a funny thing, man, especially, you know, actors, musicians, rappers, rock singers, it's kind of a lifestyle and it's easy to get caught up in it - you go to bars, you go to clubs, everyone's doing a certain thing... It's tough.

I looked at the stained-glass image of the lamb in the window above me, but that only reminded me that lambs are famous for being led to slaughter, or sometimes hanging out with lions in ill-advised relationships.

Jen put her hands on her hips and pinned Sally with the famous 'you're going to spit it out or I'm going to rip it out of you’ look. "You talked?" Jen asked sarcastically. "Sally," she cleared her throat then continued, "you have a mate. A guaranteed husband. A sure thing. Not to mention he's hot, funny, sweet, and he has a dimple. You talked?" She repeated. This time Jen's voice was skeptical. Before Sally could defend herself, however, her door opened slowly, calculatingly. "I know you weren't describing me Jennifer. So who is this male who has caught your eye so descriptively? Please do tell, so that I can rip him to pieces." Decebel's power filled the room and Sally took an involuntary step away from the very angry Alpha.

I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is "In 15 minutes everybody will be famous.

To die famous is the goal of the immortal. To die young is the goal of the healthy. To die memorably is the goal of the survivor.

Pay closer attention to it's ears, the reason it's named the Rabbit. Is it just me, or do those ears also look like someone making a rude V-Sign hand gesture? Oh, I get it now. Yes, very funny! Those bunny ears are meant to stimulate the clitoris, right? And of course, statistics and studies in bullshit magazines claim that 1 in every 2 men can't find the clitoris, right? Meaning what I think it means and that the sexist female who obviously designed this device is basically sticking two fingers up at crappy men, because her world famous toy can find the users clitoris quicker

The only difference between me and a famous writer is that I do not want to be famous.

Aunt Elizabeth said, 'Do you expect to attend many balls, if I may ask?' and I said, 'Yes, when I am rich and famous.' and Aunt Elizabeth said, 'Yes, when the moon is made of green cheese.

Positive. In other news, Marcie's throwing a Halloween party here at the farmhouse." Patch smiled. "Grey - Millar family drama?" "The theme is famous couples from history. Could she be any less original? Worse, she's roped my mom into this. They went shopping for decorations today. For three whole hours. It's like they're suddenly best friends." I picked up another apple slice and made a face at it. "Marcie is ruining everything. I wanted Scott to go with Vee, but Marcie already convinced him to go with her." Patch's smile widened. I aimed my best sulky look at him. "This isn't funny. Marcie is destroying my life. Whose side are you on anyway?" Patch raised his hands in surrender. "I'm staying out of this.

I ought to be jealous of the tower. She is more famous than I am.

I know a lot of famous people didn't do well at school, like James Brown; he dropped out in fifth grade to be an entertainer, I respect that... but that's not going to be me. I'm not going to be able to do anything but work as hard as possible all the time and compete with everyone I know all the time to make it.

Being rich or famous is the only profound thing that some people have ever said.

A bronze plaque read: GAIUS PLINIUS CAECILIUS SECUNDUS Dan made a face. "Get a load of the guy with the funny name." "I think that's Pliny the younger, the famous Roman writer," Amy supplied. She bent down to read the English portion of the tablet. "Right. In A.D. 79, Pliny chronicled the destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It's one of the earliest eyewitness accounts of a major disaster." Dan yawned. "Doesn't this remind you of the clue hunt? You know–you telling me a bunch of boring stuff, and me not listening?

Famous people steal my quotes all of the time without knowing; none of it is ever very interesting though.

Trying to get famous, so one day I can afford to live in full anonymity

Most sane human beings who have managed to attain and retain fame each uses it to dramatically increase their name’s chances of being remembered until Jesus comes back, since their heart cannot do what they consciously or unconsciously lust for, that is to say, for it to beat until Jesus returns.

Who hasn't thought about killing themselves, as a kid? How can you grow up in this world and not think about it? It's an option taken by a lot of successful people: Ernest Hemingway, Socrates, Jesus. Even before high school, I thought that it would be a cool thing to do if I ever got really famous. If I kept making my maps, for instance, and some art collector came across them and decided to make them worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, if I killed myself at the height of that, they'd be worth millions of dollars, and I wouldn't be responsible for them anymore. I'd have left behind something that spoke for itself.

I came across a man in Belgium once, a very famous detective, and he quite inflamed me. He was a marvellous little fellow. He used to say that all good detective work was a mere matter of method. My system is based on his—though of course I have progressed rather further. He was a funny little man, a great dandy, but wonderfully clever.

It's funny, I wonder why we like being praised. There's no money in it. Fame? How famous could we get? . . . Aren't humans absurd? I suppose we like praise for its own sake. The way children like ice cream. It's an inferiority complex, that's what it is. Praise assuages our insecurities. And ridiculously so.

(The Mona Lisa), that really is the ugliest portrait I’ve seen, the only thing that supposedly makes it famous is the mystery behind it,” Katherine admitted as she remembered her trips to the Louvre and how she shook her head at the poor tourists crowding around to see a jaundiced, eyebrow-less lady that reminded her of tight-lipped Washington on the dollar bill. Surely, they could have chosen a better portrait of the First President for their currency?

The plan, which I really hope I fulfilled, is that the reader, like Harry, would gradually discover Ginny as pretty much the ideal girl for Harry. She’s tough, not in an unpleasant way, but she’s gutsy. He needs to be with someone who can stand the demands of being with Harry Potter, because he’s a scary boyfriend in a lot of ways. He’s a marked man. I think she’s funny, and I think that she’s very warm and compassionate. These are all things that Harry requires in his ideal woman…. Initially, she’s terrified by his image. I mean, he’s a bit of a rock god to her when she sees him first, at 10 or 11, and he’s this famous boy. So Ginny had to go through a journey… I didn’t want Ginny to be the first girl that Harry ever kissed. That’s something I meant to say, and it’s kind of tied in…. And I feel that Ginny and Harry, in this book, they are total equals. They are worthy of each other. They’ve both gone through a big emotional journey, and they’ve really got over a lot of delusions together. So, I enjoyed writing that. I really like Ginny as a character.

IT HAS TO DO WITH ALL OF US,” said Owen Meany, when I called him that night. “SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY—NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, NOT BUT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED. AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING—I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE—JOE DIMAGGIO, ARTHUR MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THEY SEEM! LOOK AT HOW DESIRABLE SHE WAS! THAT’S WHAT SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIRABLE. SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY—AND SHE WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWAYS A LITTLE OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY,” he repeated; he was on a roll. I could hear Hester playing her guitar in the background, as if she were trying to improvise a folk song from everything she said. “AND THOSE MEN,” he said. “THOSE FAMOUS, POWERFUL MEN—DID THEY REALLY LOVE HER? AND DID THEY TAKE CARE OF HER? IF SHE WAS EVER WITH THE KENNEDYS, THEY COULDN’T HAVE LOVED HER—THEY WERE JUST USING HER, THEY WERE JUST BEING CARELESS AND TREATING THEMSELVES TO A THRILL. THAT’S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY—IT’S A BEAUITFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON’T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD—THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL. THAT”S WHAT I THOUGHT KENNEDY WAS: A MORALIST. BUT HE WAS JUST GIVING US A SNOW JOB, HE WAS JUST BEING A GOOD SEDUCER. I THOUGHT HE WAS A SAVIOR. I THOUGHT HE WANTED TO USE HIS POWER TO DO GOOD. BUT PEOPLE WILL SAY AND DO ANYTHING JUST TO GET THE POWER; THEN THEY’LL USE THE POWER JUST TO GET A THRILL. MARILYN MONROE WAS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE BEST MAN—MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST INTEGRITY, MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST ABILITY TO DO GOOD. AND SHE WAS SEDUCED, OVER AND OVER AGAIN—SHE GOT FOOLED, SHE WAS TRICKED, SHE GOT USED, SHE WAS USED UP. JUST LIKE THE COUNTRY. THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY’RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US. THAT'S WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU AND ME,” said Owen Meany. “WE’RE GOING TO BE USED.

God, all those months of seeing Kelsey’s pictures and hearing about her travels, and I had been raging with jealousy. And now it was my turn. I wanted to mind the gap at the tube station and eat fish and chips and try to make the Queen’s guards laugh. I wanted to see Big Ben and the Globe and the London Bridge and Dame Judi Dench. Or Maggie Smith. Or Alan Rickman. Or Sir Ian McKellen. Or anybody famous and British, really. Holy crap. This was really happening. And I wasn’t just a tourist. I was visiting with someone who’d grown up in the city. With my fiancé. Take that, world.

I don’t have any regrets,” a famous movie actor said in an interview I recently witnessed. “I’d live everything over exactly the same way.” “That’s really pathetic,” the talk show host said. “Are you seeking help?” “Yeah. My shrink says we’re making progress. Before, I wouldn’t even admit that I would live it all over,” the actor said, starting to choke up. “I thought one life was satisfying enough.” “My God,” the host said, cupping his hand to his mouth. “The first breakthrough was when I said I would live it over, but only in my dreams. Nocturnal recurrence.” “You’re like the character in that one movie of yours. What’s it called? You know, the one where you eat yourself.” “The Silence of Sam.” “That’s it. Can you do the scene?” The actor lifts up his foot to stick it in his mouth. I reach over from my seat and help him to fit it into his bulging cheeks. The audience goes wild.

-If you're so badass, how come I never heard of you?" -"I prefer to stay out of the spotlight, unlike some sorceresses I know," she said with a smile as she came to stop in front of him."But I do have a nickname." -"Hot on a stick?" -"No." -"Spanks with magic?" -"Most definitely not." -"I know, you must be the famous BJ Swallows." -"I am going to hurt you.

What the famous big blue Boy Scout told to a green Kryptonite? What?? YOU rock!

Brix scoffs. “Please.” He lifts his, and holy forking fucknuggets. He has abs on top of his abs. Super abs. They could be their own superhero and wear their own cape.

Sometimes people decide not to like me for the most arbitrary reasons. Sometimes it's just because I'm famous, and successful people make them uncomfortable. Sometimes it's because I voted differently than them. And sometimes it's because I frowned outside their favorite yogurt shop and now they want to cancel me forever because they think I'm against yogurt.

When it comes to being famous, you’re usually the last to know, and the first to deny it. Unless you were already famous in your head. In which case, party on, Wayne! Party on, Garth!

I loathed being sixty-four, and I will hate being sixty-five. I don’t let on about such things in person; in person, I am cheerful and Pollyannaish. But the honest truth is that it’s sad to be over sixty. The long shadows are everywhere—friends dying and battling illness. A miasma of melancholy hangs there, forcing you to deal with the fact that your life, however happy and successful, has been full of disappointments and mistakes, little ones and big ones. There are dreams that are never quite going to come true, ambitions that will never quite be realized. There are, in short, regrets. Edith Piaf was famous for singing a song called “Non, je ne regrette rien.” It’s a good song. I know what she meant. I can get into it; I can make a case that I regret nothing. After all, most of my mistakes turned out to be things I survived, or turned into funny stories, or, on occasion, even made money from. But

This is a great wedding. I like weddings." "It is a good one, isn't it?" she agreed. "But it was always going to be--Emma so efficient." "Isn't she," he said. "I like weddings." Lulu said nothing. "Weddings," he said after a moment. "Funny things, but I like them." Lulu stopped dancing and drew back to look up into his eyes. "If you say that one more time," she said levelly, "I won't take you to the Cheddar cheese shop." "Sorry," he said quickly "I like funerals, too, if that's any help? We do marvelous ones in Ireland, we're famous for them.

New Rule: Stop pretending your drugs are morally superior to my drugs because you get yours at a store. This week, they released the autopsy report on Anna Nicole Smith, and the cause of death was what I always thought it was: mad cow. No, it turns out she had nine different prescription drugs in her—which, in the medical field, is known as the “full Limbaugh.” They opened her up, and a Walgreens jumped out. Antidepressants, anti-anxiety pills, sleeping pills, sedatives, Valium, methadone—this woman was killed by her doctor, who is a glorified bartender. I’m not going to say his name, but only because (a) I don’t want to get sued, and (b) my back is killing me. This month marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of a famous government report. I was sixteen in 1972, and I remember how excited we were when Nixon’s much ballyhooed National Commission on Drug Abuse came out and said pot should be legalized. It was a moment of great hope for common sense—and then, just like Bush did with the Iraq Study Group, Nixon took the report and threw it in the garbage, and from there the ’70s went right into disco and colored underpants. This week in American Scientist, a magazine George Bush wouldn’t read if he got food poisoning in Mexico and it was the only thing he could reach from the toilet, described a study done in England that measured the lethality of various drugs, and found tobacco and alcohol far worse than pot, LSD, or Ecstasy—which pretty much mirrors my own experiments in this same area. The Beatles took LSD and wrote Sgt. Pepper—Anna Nicole Smith took legal drugs and couldn’t remember the number for nine-one-one. I wish I had more time to go into the fact that the drug war has always been about keeping black men from voting by finding out what they’re addicted to and making it illegal—it’s a miracle our government hasn’t outlawed fat white women yet—but I leave with one request: Would someone please just make a bumper sticker that says, “I’m a stoner, and I vote.

‘And what about a [band] name?’ said Tony [Iommi]. The three of us looked at each other. ‘We should all take a couple of days to think about it,’ I said. ‘I dunno about you two, but I’ve got a special place where I go to get ideas for important stuff like this. It’s never failed me yet.’ Forty-eight hours later I blurted out: ‘I’ve got it!’ ‘Must have been that dodgy bird you poked the other night,’ said Geezer. ‘Has your whelk turned green yet?’ Tony and Bill snickered into their plates of egg and chips. We were sitting in a greasy spoon caff in Aston. So far, everyone was getting along famously. ‘Very funny, Geezer,’ I said, waving an eggy fork at him. ‘I mean the name for our band.’ The snickering died down. ‘Go on then,’ said Tony [Iommi]. ‘Well, I was on the shitter last night, and...' ‘That’s your special place?’ spluttered Bill, blobs of mushed-up egg and HP sauce flying out of his mouth. ‘Where the f**k did you think it was, Bill?’ I said. ‘The hanging gardens of f**king Babylon?

This [discovery of a cell-free yeast extract] will make him famous, even though he has no talent for chemistry. {Comment on German scientist Eduard Buchner who later ironically won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this discovery}

So for some reason everybody makes this huge deal about pandas. I don't know why. They never actually do anything except eat and poop. But they're really famous.' 'Yeah," said Suzana. 'They're like the Kardashians of zoo animals.

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs. No religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be pitiful if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." -Albert Einstein

Here's why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak, so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. It's like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street. For instance, if we met a party and I wanted to tell you a story about the time I needed to get a soccer ball in my neighbor's yard but his dog chased me and I had to jump into a swimming pool to escape, and I began telling the story , you, upon hearing the words 'soccer' and 'neighbor' in the same sentence, might interrupt and mention that your childhood neighbor was Pele, the famous soccer player, and I might be courteous and say, Didn't he play for the Cosmos of New York? Did you grow up in New York? And you might reply that no, you grew up in Brazil on the streets of Tres Coracoes with Pele and I might say, I thought you were from Tennessee, and you might say, not originally, and then go on to outline your genealogy at length. So my initial conversational gambit - that I had a funny story about being chased by my neighbor's dog - would be totally lost, and only because you had to tell me all about Pele. Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories.

It was funny that she should have said that, for Julian chose that moment to begin baaing like a flock of sheep. His one long, bleating "baa-baa-aa-aa" was taken up by the echoes at once, and it seemed suddenly as if hundreds of poor lost sheep were baa-ing their way down the dungeons! Mr. Stick jumped to his feet, as white as a sheet. "Well, if it isn't sheep now!" he said. "What's up? What's in these "ere dungeons? I never did like them." "Baa-aa-AAAAAAAAAAP went the mournful bleats all round and about. And then

In the Catskills, nostalgia runs backwards. The upwardly mobile Jewish masses of the 1950s and 1960s have been replaced by the Jews of 19th century Poland.

A Bavarian is mixture between an Austrian and a human being." -Otto von Bismarck  

Arnold Schwarzenegger had muscles in places where other men don't even have places." -Claus Kleber  

As George Bernard Shaw famously wrote, “Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Like some huge, mutant chicken–I sat there hatching a gas-egg the size of a planet.

Power is a funny thing. Sometimes you can just take it.

Most nobodies are somebodies and most somebodies are nobodies somewhere.

I have started a new blog W.A.R.(Writers Amongst Readers) for all those writing or reading books. Quotes, excerpts, comments from the world's greatest writers. See robinhawdonblog

Being known by, or getting the attention of, millions of people is almost always wasted on someone who is neither thought-provoking nor knowledgeable … or at least funny.

Power works in funny ways. He was, and still is, one of the most famous actors in the world.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be

Principal Totty was one of those people who frown while they’re speaking, and then smile at the end of each sentence. It was weird. It was like there were two different people inside her brain.

Testosterone Autism: The person beset by this ailment....develops an interest in various tools and machinery, and he's drawn to the Second World War and the biographies of famous people, mainly politicians and villains.

As Osborne famously declared, "Adequacy is sufficient. All else is superfluous." Jobs found that approach to be morally appalling, and he spent days making fun of Osborne. "This guy just doesn't get it," Jobs repeatedly railed as he wandered the Apple corridors. "He's not making art, he's making shit.

Amy Bellini and Sasha Tibbles traipsed down the aisle and wriggled into the back seat, Amy right next to me. Her damp brown hair flicked in my face as she turned to make herself more comfortable. I didn’t mind. I wouldn’t admit this to ANYONE, but I think she’s not quite as weird as the rest of the girls.

When I was twelve, my mother said to me, ‘I’ve entered you for Marlborough and Repton. Which would you like to go to?’ Both were famous Public Schools, but that was all I knew about them. ‘Repton,’ I said. ‘I’ll go to Repton.’ It was an easier word to say than Marlborough. ‘Very well,’ my mother said. ‘You shall go to Repton.

If you’re going to be famous, sure, be funny, be irreverent. Listen to the shouters as well as the whisperers. But above all, be useful. That was his modus, it always seemed to me, a modus that became a prayer in our family. Simple. Direct. Make us useful, dear God. We’re available. How can we be useful in this world where we find ourselves?

So I did some research,” she went on. “The good thing about being a famous model is that you can call anyone and they’ll talk to you. So I called this illusionist I’d seen on Broadway a couple of years ago. He heard the story and then he laughed. I said what’s so funny. He asked me a question: Did this guru do this after dinner? I was surprised. What the hell could that have to do with it? But I said yes, how did you know? He asked if we had coffee. Again I said yes. Did he take his black? One more time I said yes.” Shauna was smiling now. “Do you know how he did it, Beck?” I shook my head. “No clue.” “When he passed the card to Wendy, it went over his coffee cup. Black coffee, Beck. It reflects like a mirror. That’s how he saw what I’d written. It was just a dumb parlor trick.

Phoebe Hurty hired me to write copy for ads about teen aged clothes. I had to wear the clothes I praised. That was part of the job. And I became friends with her two sons, who were my age. I was over at their house all the time. She would talk bawdily to me and her sons, and our girlfriends when we brought them around. She was funny. She was liberating. She taught us to be impolite in conversation not only about sexual matters, but about American history and famous heroes, about the distribution of wealth, about school, about everything. I now make my living being impolite. I am clumsy at it. I keep trying to imitate the impoliteness which was so graceful in Phoebe Hurty. I think now that grace was easier for her than it is for me because of the mood of the Great Depression. She believed what so many Americans believed then: that the nation would be happy and just and rational when prosperity came. I never hear that word anymore: Prosperity. It used to be a synonym for Paradise. And Phoebe Hurty was able to believe that the impoliteness she recommended would give shape to an American paradise. Now her sort of impoliteness is in fashion. But nobody believes anymore in a new American paradise. I sure miss Phoebe Hurty.

Anything Bunny wrote was bound to be alarmingly original, since he began with such odd working materials and managed to alter them further by his befuddled scrutiny, but the John Donne paper must have been the worst of all the bad papers he ever wrote (ironic, given that it was the only thing he ever wrote that saw print. After he disappeared, a journalist asked for an excerpt from the missing young scholar's work and Marion gave him a copy of it, a laboriously edited paragraph of which eventually found its way into People magazine). Somewhere, Bunny had heard that John Donne had been acquainted with Izaak Walton, and in some dim corridor of his mind this friendship grew larger and larger, until in his mind the two men were practically interchangeable. We never understood how this fatal connection had established itself: Henry blamed it on Men of Thought and Deed, but no one knew for sure. A week or two before the paper was due, he had started showing up in my room about two or three in the morning, looking as if he had just narrowly escaped some natural disaster, his tie askew and his eyes wild and rolling. 'Hello, hello,' he would say, stepping in, running both hands through his disordered hair. 'Hope I didn't wake you, don't mind if I cut on the lights, do you, ah, here we go, yes, yes…' He would turn on the lights and then pace back and forth for a while without taking off his coat, hands clasped behind his back, shaking his head. Finally he would stop dead in his tracks and say, with a desperate look in his eye: 'Metahemeralism. Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism.' 'I'm sorry. I don't know what that is.' 'I don't either,' Bunny would say brokenly. 'Got to do with art or pastoralism or something. That's how I gotta tie together John Donne and Izaak Walton, see.' He would resume pacing. 'Donne. Walton. Metahemeralism. That's the problem as I see it.' 'Bunny, I don't think "metahemeralism" is even a word.' 'Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That's it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe.' 'Is it in the dictionary?' 'Dunno. Don't know how to spell it. I mean' – he made a picture frame with his hands – 'the poet and the fisherman. Parfait. Boon companions. Out in the open spaces. Living the good life. Metahemeralism's gotta be the glue here, see?' And so it would go, for sometimes half an hour or more, with Bunny raving about fishing, and sonnets, and heaven knew what, until in the middle of his monologue he would be struck by a brilliant thought and bluster off as suddenly as he had descended. He finished the paper four days before the deadline and ran around showing it to everyone before he turned it in. 'This is a nice paper, Bun -,' Charles said cautiously. 'Thanks, thanks.' 'But don't you think you ought to mention John Donne more often? Wasn't that your assignment?' 'Oh, Donne,' Bunny had said scoffingly. 'I don't want to drag him into this.' Henry refused to read it. 'I'm sure it's over my head, Bunny, really,' he said, glancing over the first page. 'Say, what's wrong with this type?' 'Triple-spaced it,' said Bunny proudly. 'These lines are about an inch apart.' 'Looks kind of like free verse, doesn't it?' Henry made a funny little snorting noise through his nose. 'Looks kind of like a menu,' he said. All I remember about the paper was that it ended with the sentence 'And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.' We wondered if he would fail.

Even in the warm faelight of the foyer, the gown glittered and gleamed like a fresh-cut jewel. We had taken my gown from Starfall and refashioned it, adding sheer silk panels to the back shoulders, the glittering material like woven starlight as it flowed behind me in lieu of a veil or cape. If Rhysand was Night Triumphant, I was the star that only glowed thanks to his darkness, the light only visible because of him. I scowled up the stairs. That is, if he bothered to show up on time. My hair, Nuala had swept into an ornate, elegant arc across my head, and in front of it... I caught Cassian glancing at me for the third time in less than a minute and demanded, 'What?' His lips twitched at the corners. 'You just look so...' 'Here we go,' Mor muttered from where she picked at her red-tinted nails against the stair banister. Rings glinted at every knuckle, on every finger; stacks of bracelets tinkled against each other on either wrist. 'Official,' Cassian said with an incredulous look in her direction. He waved a Siphon-topped hand to me. 'Fancy.' 'Over five hundred years old,' Mor said, shaking her head sadly, 'a skilled warrior and general, famous throughout territories, and complementing ladies is still something he finds next to impossible. Remind me why we bring you on diplomatic meetings?' Azriel, wreathed in shadows by the front door, chuckled quietly. Cassian shot him a glare. 'I don't see you spouting poetry, brother.' Azriel crossed his arms, still smiling faintly. 'I don't need to resort to it.

I brought Sev to the bedside, and together the little polymath and I counted: “All right, now we count legs: one—” “I don’t think that’s funny,” said Sev. “I know how to count.” “Well, then, what happened?” “I got the wrong chart.” “You didn’t look at this patient?” “Yes, I did,” said Sev. “I looked, I just didn’t see the other leg, that’s all. My cognitive set was for one leg, not for two.” “Terrific,” I said. “Reminds me of a very famous House LAW: SHOW ME A BMS WHO ONLY TRIPLES MY WORK AND I WILL KISS HIS FEET.

It won't work. You see, he is a liar and a thief. And he's been one for too long. He can't retire now. In addition to which. He has become, I'm afraid, a hack.' 'He may be all those things but she knows he's not.' 'What gives her that curious idea?' 'She's been with him constantly for the last few days. She's seen him shaking with terror, exhausted, ready to quit. She's watched him pull himself together again and she's also seen him be warm and tender. And funny. Not famous-international-wit funny but really funny.' 'Do you think she's an idiot? Do you think she doesn't know what kind of man he is? Or what he needs?' 'And what he needs is L-O-V-E? Uh-uh it's too late. He is 43 years old. Or will be this October. He's been married twice, both times disastrously and there have been too many years of... too much dough, too much bad writing and too much whiskey. He's got nothing left inside to give. Even if he could, which he can't.' 'But that's not true. You can, you have. I just know it.' 'No, you don't. It's lousy. In any case, the problem is you're not in love with the script. You're in love with me. And why shouldn't you be? When suddenly, waltzing into your life comes this charming and relatively handsome stranger. Me. Smooth as silk, with a highly practised line of chatter, specifically designed to knock relatively unsophisticated chicks like you Miss Simpson, right on their ears. Which I'm terribly afraid I've done. Well if it's the last decent thing I do in this world, and it very well may be, I'm going to fix that. I'm going to send you packing Miss Simpson before I cause you serious and irrevocable harm. You want the truth? Of course you don't. I'll give it to you anyway. I do not give one damn about anything.

Raquel laughed, and David joined her. They sounded slightly manic. “You’re free now,” he said. “Of all of it,” she answered, and I looked up to see them locked in a gaze I’d previously only observed between actors on Easton Heights—one filled with all the things unspoken over the years, all the betrayals and fears and pain left behind in favor of overwhelming love. It was beautiful. Oh, who am I kidding, it was awkward as all heck and I didn’t have time for it. “Okay! So, you may have noticed Lend is in the kitchen.” “Mmm hmm,” Raquel answered, reaching up to smooth down a stray piece of David’s hair. “Yeah, that’d be the big faerie curse.” “Farie curse?” She actually turned toward me; David took both her hands in his. “Yup. Really funny one, too. See, any time Lend and I are in the same room or can see each other or could actually, you know, touch, he falls fast asleep.” “Oh,” Raquel frowned. “So I need your help. You know all the names of the IPCA controlled faeries, right?” She nodded, her frown deepening. “Well, it was a dark faerie curse, so I figure we need a dark faerie to undo it. So you call an Unseelie faerie, we give him or her a named command to break the curse, ta-da, we can double-date!” “Wait, who can double-date?” Lend asked. “I’ll let your dad tell you. So. Faerie?” Raquel heaved a sigh, along the lines of her famous things never get easier, do they? sign, and, boy, I agreed with her. “To be honest, I don’t know which court most of the faeries belong to.” “You don’t? How can you not know? It seems like pretty vital information to me. You know, ‘Are you a member of the evil court kidnapping humans and plotting world domination, or a member of the moderately less evil court who just wants to get the crap off the planet?’ sort of a survey when you get them.

Delete the italics I am not popular enough. I am not good enough. I am not strong enough. I am not lovable enough. I am not attractive enough. I am not cool enough. I am not hot enough. I am not clever enough. I am not funny enough. I am not educated enough. I am not Oxford enough. I am not literary enough. I am not rich enough. I am not posh enough. I am not young enough. I am not tough enough. I am not well-traveled enough. I am not talented enough. I am not cultured enough. I am not smooth-skinned enough. I am not thin enough. I am not muscular enough. I am not famous enough. I am not interesting enough. I am not worth enough. (I am enough.)

Real life is a funny thing you know. In real life saying the right thing, at the right moment is beyond crucial. So crucial in fact, that most of us start to hesitate, for fear of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. But lately what I’ve began to fear more than that, is letting the moment pass with saying anything. I think you deserved to look back on your life without this chorus of resounding voices saying, I could of but it’s too late now. So there’s a time for silence, and there is a time for waiting your turn. But if you know how you feel and you so clearly know what you need to say. You’ll know it. I don’t think you should wait. I think you should speak now.

I reach out and squeeze her hand, and remember everything we’ve lived through together. The normal things we endured as we grew from girls to women. The days in school where boys would line us up in order of our fuckability. The parties where it was normal to lie on top of a semi-conscious girl, do things to her, then call her a slut afterwards. A Christmas number-one song about a pregnant woman being stuffed into the boot of a car and driven off a bridge. Laughing when your male friends made rape jokes. Opening a newspaper and seeing the breasts of a girl who had only just turned legal, dressed in school uniform to make her look underage. Of the childhood films we grew up on, and loved, and knew all the words to, where, at the end, a girl would always get chosen for looking the prettiest compared to all the others. Reading magazines that told you to mirror men’s body language, and hum on their dick when you went down on them, that turned into books about how to get them to commit by not being yourself. Of size zero, and Atkins, and Five-Two, and cabbage soup, and juice cleanses and eat clean. Of pole-dancing lessons as a great way to get fit, and actually, if you want to be really cool, come to the actual strip club too. Of being sexually assaulted when you kissed someone on a dance floor and not thinking about it properly until you are twenty-seven and read a book about how maybe it was wrong. Of being jealous of your friend who got assaulted on the dance floor because why didn’t he pick you to assault? Boys not wanting to be with you unless you fuck them quickly. Boys not wanting to be with you because you fucked them too quickly. Being terrified to walk anywhere in the dark in case the worst thing happens to you, and so your male friend walks you home to keep you safe, and then comes into your bedroom and does the worst thing to you, and now, when you look him up online, he’s engaged to a woman who wears a feminist T-shirt and isn’t going to change her name when they get married. Of learning to have no pubic hair, and how liberating it is to pay thirty-five pounds a month to rip this from your body and lurch up in agony. Rings around famous women’s bodies saying ‘look at this cellulite’, oh, by the way, here is a twenty-quid cream so you don’t get

There is a new trend among authors to thank every famous people for inspiration, non-existent assistance, and/or some casual reference to the author’s work. Authors do this to pump themselves up. So, on the off chance that this is helpful, I wish to thank the following people: the Prime Minister of India for promoting literacy; Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, who called me up one day and said, “Hey, you’re a good writer”; Kabir Das, who inspired me to write about love; Shahrukh Khan, who is an awesome actor; and last but not least, President of India, who once waved to me in New Delhi as the convoy moved from the streets to the Rashtrapati Bhavan Building, screwing up traffic for half an hour, thereby forcing me to kill time by thinking of a great plot to write this book.

Anyone who is unimpressed with sneering atheism will be unimpressed by the famous science fiction works by Margaret Atwood or the fantasy of Phillip Pullman and those of their ilk. Pullman was as blasphemous as Heinlein was in Stranger In A Strange Land, but not as funny, and the ending of his His Dark Materials was dark indeed and unsatisfying. (Pullman’s hero and heroine end up parted by a law of nature invented at the last minute by a lazy author, which decrees that persons of different earths in the multiverse sicken and die if they immigrate). It is the kind of thing one reads when a surfeit of happy endings leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and you need a swish of pagan vinegar to wash out all that Christian saccharine endemic to Western civilization. Everyone likes a vacation from happiness occasionally, I suppose.

One of the most asked questions about the stories told in my family is “How much of that is true?” Of course, the answer depends on who is telling the story. There is no doubt that Uncle Si is the most entertaining storyteller among the Robertson clan. One of his most famous stories is about the time his secondhand smoke made a deer cough. The story came about after many members of my family jokingly refused to let Si hunt our deer stands because of the odor he left behind. Deer hunters know the best survival defense for a deer is his sense of smell. Si seems to think that is just a superstition and has a coughing deer story to prove it. Even though Si has quit smoking, we encourage him to hunt his own stand with the wind blowing in his face for best results. What makes Si’s stories so funny is his passion and mannerisms in telling them.

And everywhere, just as there were animals on land, were the animals of the sea. The tiniest fish made the largest schools- herring, anchovies, and baby mackerel sparkling and cavorting in the light like a million diamonds. They twirled into whirlpools and flowed over the sandy floor like one large, unlikely animal. Slightly larger fish came in a rainbow, red and yellow and blue and orange and purple and green and particolored like clowns: dragonets and blennies and gobies and combers. Hake, shad, char, whiting, cod, flounder, and mullet made the solid middle class. The biggest loners, groupers and oarfish and dogfish and the major sharks and tuna that all grew to a large, ripe old age did so because they had figured out how to avoid human boats, nets, lines, and bait. The black-eyed predators were well aware they were top of the food chain only down deep, and somewhere beyond the surface there were things even more hungry and frightening than they. Rounding out the population were the famous un-fish of the ocean: the octopus, flexing and swirling the ends of her tentacles; delicate jellyfish like fairies; lobsters and sea stars; urchins and nudibranchs... the funny, caterpillar-like creatures that flowed over the ocean floor wearing all kinds of colors and appendages. All of these creatures woke, slept, played, swam about, and lived their whole lives under the sea, unconcerned with what went on above them. But there were other animals in this land, strange ones, who spoke both sky and sea. Seals and dolphins and turtles and the rare fin whale would come down to hunt or talk for a bit and then vanish to that strange membrane that separated the ocean from everything else. Of course they were loved- but perhaps not quite entirely trusted.

Metahemeralism. Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism." "I'm sorry. I don't know what that is." "I don't either," Bunny would say brokenly. "Got to do with art or pastoralism or something. That's how I gotta tie together John Donne and Izaak Walton, see." He would resume pacing. "Donne. Walton. Metahemeralism. That's the problem as I see it." "Bunny, I don't think "metahemeralism" is even a word." "Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That's it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe." "Is it in the dictionary?" "Dunno. Don't know how to spell it. I mean" — he made a picture frame with his hands — "the poet and the fisherman. Parfait. Boon companions. Out in the open spaces. Living the good life. Metahemeralism's gotta be the glue here, see?" And so it would go on, for sometimes half an hour or more, with Bunny raving about fishing, and sonnets, and heaven knew what, until in the middle of his monologue he would be struck by a brilliant thought and bluster off as suddenly as he had descended. He finished the paper four days before the deadline and ran around showing it to everyone before he turned it in. "This is a nice paper, Bun — ," Charles said cautiously. "Thanks, thanks." "But don't you think you ought to mention John Donne more often? Wasn't that your assignment?" "Oh, Donne," Bunny had said scoffingly. "I don't want to drag him into this." Henry had refused to read it. "I'm sure it's over my head, Bunny, really," he said, glancing over the first page. "Say, what's wrong with this type?" "Tripled spaced it," said Bunny proudly. "These lines are about an inch apart." "Looks kind of like free verse, doesn't it?" Henry made a funny little snorting noise through his nose. "Looks kind of like a menu," he said. All I remember about the paper was that it ended with the sentence "And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.

We were working on the idea about dogs’ Internet searches, and first we debated whether the sketch should feature real dogs or Henrietta and Viv in dog costumes (because cast members were always, unfailingly, trying to get more air time, we quickly went with the latter). Then we discussed where it should take place (the computer cluster in a public library, but, even though all this mattered for was the establishing shot, we got stalled on whether that library should be New York’s famous Main Branch building on Fifth Avenue, with the lion statues in front, a generic suburban library in Kansas City, or a generic suburban library in Jacksonville, Florida, which was where Viv was from). Then we really got stalled on the breeds of dogs. Out of loyalty to my stepfather and Sugar, I wanted at least one to be a beagle. Viv said that it would work best if one was really big and one was really little, and Henrietta said she was fine with any big dog except a German Shepherd because she’d been bitten by her neighbor’s German Shepherd in third grade. After forty minutes we’d decided on a St. Bernard and a Chihuahua—I eventually conceded that Chihuahuas were funnier than beagles. We decided to go with the Florida location for the establishing shot because the lions in front of the New York Main Branch could preempt or diminish the appearance of the St. Bernard. Then we’d arrived at the fun part, which was the search terms. With her mouth full of beef kebab, Viv said, “Am I adopted?” With my mouth full of spanakopita, I said, “Am I a good girl?” With her mouth full of falafel, Henrietta said, “Am I five or thirty-five?” “Why is thunder scary?” I said. “Discreet crotch-sniffing techniques,” Henrietta said. “Cheap mani-pedis in my area,” Viv said. “Oh, and cheapest self-driving car.” “Best hamburgers near me,” I said. “What is halitosis,” Henrietta said. “Halitosis what to do,” I said. “Where do humans pee,” Viv said. “Taco Bell Chihuahua male or female,” I said. “Target bull terrier married,” Viv said. “Lassie plastic surgery,” Henrietta said. “Funny cat videos,” I said. “Corgis embarrassing themselves YouTube,” Viv said. “YouTube little dog scares away big dog,” I said. “Doghub two poodles and one corgi,” Henrietta said. “Waxing my tail,” I said. “Is my tail a normal size,” Viv said.

But Dave Wain that lean rangy red head Welchman with his penchant for going off in Willie to fish in the Rogue River up in Oregon where he knows an abandoned mining camp, or for blattin around the desert roads, for suddenly reappearing in town to get drunk, and a marvelous poet himself, has that certain something that young hip teenagers probably wanta imitate–For one thing is one of the world's best talkers, and funny too–As I'll show–It was he and George Baso who hit on the fantastically simple truth that everybody in America was walking around with a dirty behind, but everybody, because the ancient ritual of washing with water after the toilet had not occurred in all the modern antisepticism–Says Dave "People in America have all these racks of drycleaned clothes like you say on their trips, they spatter Eau de Cologne all over themselves, they wear Ban and Aid or whatever it is under their armpits, they get aghast to see a spot on a shirt or a dress, they probably change underwear and socks maybe even twice a day, they go around all puffed up and insolent thinking themselves the cleanest people on earth and they're walkin around with dirty azzoles–Isnt that amazing?give me a little nip on that tit" he says reaching for my drink so I order two more, I've been engrossed, Dave can order all the drinks he wants anytime, "The President of the United States, the big ministers of state, the great bishops and shmishops and big shots everywhere, down to the lowest factory worker with all his fierce pride, movie stars, executives and great engineers and presidents of law firms and advertising firms with silk shirts and neckties and great expensive traveling cases in which they place these various expensive English imported hair brushes and shaving gear and pomades and perfumes are all walkin around with dirty azzoles! All you gotta do is simply wash yourself with soap and water! it hasn't occurred to anybody in America at all! it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard of! dont you think it's marvelous that we're being called filthy unwashed beatniks but we're the only ones walkin around with clean azzoles?"–The whole azzole shot in fact had spread swiftly and everybody I knew and Dave knew from coast to coast had embarked on this great crusade which I must say is a good one–In fact in Big Sur I'd instituted a shelf in Monsanto's outhouse where the soap must be kept and everyone had to bring a can of water there on each trip–Monsanto hadnt heard about it yet, "Do you realize that until we tell poor Lorenzo Monsanto the famous writer that he is walking around with a dirty azzole he will be doing just that?"–"Let's go tell him right now!"–"Why of course if we wait another minute...and besides do you know what it does to people to walk around with a dirty azzole? it leaves a great yawning guilt that they cant understand all day, they go to work all cleaned up in the morning and you can smell all that freshly laundered clothes and Eau de Cologne in the commute train yet there's something gnawing at them, something's wrong, they know something's wrong they dont know just what!"–We rush to tell Monsanto at once in the book store around the corner. (Big Sur, Chap. 11)

(Owen speaks in all caps throughout the story) "SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY - NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, BUT NOT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED. AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING - I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE - JOE DIMAGGIO, ARTHUR MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THEY SEEM. LOOK AT HOW DESIREABLE SHE WAS! THAT'S WHAT SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIREABLE, SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY - AND SHE WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWYAS A LITTLE OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY... THOSE FAMOUS, POWERFUL MEN - DID THEY REALLY LOVE HER? DID THEY TAKE CARE OF HER? IF SHE WAS EVER WITH THE KENNEDYS, THEY COULDN'T HAVE LOVED HER - THEY WERE JUST USING HER. THEY WERE JUST BEING CARELESS AND TREATING THEMSELVES TO A THRILL. THAT'S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY - IT'S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON'T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD - THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL... BUT PEOPLE WILL SAY AND DO ANYTHING JUST TO GET THE POWER; THEN THEY'LL USE THE POWER JUST TO GET A THRILL. MARILYN MONROE WAS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE BEST MAN - MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST INTEGRITY, MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST ABILITY TO DO GOOD. AND SHE WAS SEDUCED, OVER AND OVER AGAIN - SHE GOT FOOLED, SHE WAS TRICKED, SHE GOT USED, SHE WAS USED UP. JUST LIKE THE COUNTRY. THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY'RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US. ..

Take the famous slogan on the atheist bus in London … “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” … The word that offends against realism here is “enjoy.” I’m sorry—enjoy your life? Enjoy your life? I’m not making some kind of neo-puritan objection to enjoyment. Enjoyment is lovely. Enjoyment is great. The more enjoyment the better. But enjoyment is one emotion … Only sometimes, when you’re being lucky, will you stand in a relationship to what’s happening to you where you’ll gaze at it with warm, approving satisfaction. The rest of the time, you’ll be busy feeling hope, boredom, curiosity, anxiety, irritation, fear, joy, bewilderment, hate, tenderness, despair, relief, exhaustion … This really is a bizarre category error. But not necessarily an innocent one … The implication of the bus slogan is that enjoyment would be your natural state if you weren’t being “worried” by us believer … Take away the malignant threat of God-talk, and you would revert to continuous pleasure, under cloudless skies. What’s so wrong with this, apart from it being total bollocks? … Suppose, as the atheist bus goes by, that you are the fifty-something woman with the Tesco bags, trudging home to find out whether your dementing lover has smeared the walls of the flat with her own shit again. Yesterday when she did it, you hit her, and she mewled till her face was a mess of tears and mucus which you also had to clean up. The only thing that would ease the weight on your heart would be to tell the funniest, sharpest-tongued person you know about it: but that person no longer inhabits the creature who will meet you when you unlock the door. Respite care would help, but nothing will restore your sweetheart, your true love, your darling, your joy. Or suppose you’re that boy in the wheelchair, the one with the spasming corkscrew limbs and the funny-looking head. You’ve never been able to talk, but one of your hands has been enough under your control to tap out messages. Now the electrical storm in your nervous system is spreading there too, and your fingers tap more errors than readable words. Soon your narrow channel to the world will close altogether, and you’ll be left all alone in the hulk of your body. Research into the genetics of your disease may abolish it altogether in later generations, but it won’t rescue you. Or suppose you’re that skanky-looking woman in the doorway, the one with the rat’s nest of dreadlocks. Two days ago you skedaddled from rehab. The first couple of hits were great: your tolerance had gone right down, over two weeks of abstinence and square meals, and the rush of bliss was the way it used to be when you began. But now you’re back in the grind, and the news is trickling through you that you’ve fucked up big time. Always before you’ve had this story you tell yourself about getting clean, but now you see it isn’t true, now you know you haven’t the strength. Social services will be keeping your little boy. And in about half an hour you’ll be giving someone a blowjob for a fiver behind the bus station. Better drugs policy might help, but it won’t ease the need, and the shame over the need, and the need to wipe away the shame. So when the atheist bus comes by, and tells you that there’s probably no God so you should stop worrying and enjoy your life, the slogan is not just bitterly inappropriate in mood. What it means, if it’s true, is that anyone who isn’t enjoying themselves is entirely on their own. The three of you are, for instance; you’re all three locked in your unshareable situations, banged up for good in cells no other human being can enter. What the atheist bus says is: there’s no help coming … But let’s be clear about the emotional logic of the bus’s message. It amounts to a denial of hope or consolation, on any but the most chirpy, squeaky, bubble-gummy reading of the human situation. St Augustine called this kind of thing “cruel optimism” fifteen hundred years ago, and it’s still cruel.

what could Marilyn Monroe’s death ever have to do with me? “IT HAS TO DO WITH ALL OF US,” said Owen Meany, when I called him that night. “SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY—NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, BUT NOT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED. AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING—I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE—JOE DIMAGGIO, ARTHUR MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THEY SEEM! LOOK AT HOW DESIRABLE SHE WAS! THAT’S WHAT SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIRABLE. SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY—AND SHE WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWAYS A LITTLE OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY,” he repeated; he was on a roll. I could hear Hester playing her guitar in the background, as if she were trying to improvise a folk song from everything he said. “AND THOSE MEN,” he said. “THOSE FAMOUS, POWERFUL MEN—DID THEY REALLY LOVE HER? DID THEY TAKE CARE OF HER? IF SHE WAS EVER WITH THE KENNEDYS, THEY COULDN’T HAVE LOVED HER—THEY WERE JUST USING HER, THEY WERE JUST BEING CARELESS AND TREATING THEMSELVES TO A THRILL. THAT’S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY—IT’S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON’T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD—THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL. THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT KENNEDY WAS: A MORALIST. BUT HE WAS JUST GIVING US A SNOW JOB, HE WAS JUST BEING A GOOD SEDUCER. I THOUGHT HE WAS A SAVIOR. I THOUGHT HE WANTED TO USE HIS POWER TO DO GOOD. BUT PEOPLE WILL SAY AND DO ANYTHING JUST TO GET THE POWER; THEN THEY’LL USE THE POWER JUST TO GET A THRILL. MARILYN MONROE WAS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE BEST MAN—MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST INTEGRITY, MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST ABILITY TO DO GOOD. AND SHE WAS SEDUCED, OVER AND OVER AGAIN—SHE GOT FOOLED, SHE WAS TRICKED, SHE GOT USED, SHE WAS USED UP. JUST LIKE THE COUNTRY. THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY’RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US. THAT’S WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU AND ME,” said Owen Meany. “WE’RE GOING TO BE USED.

When it’s all said and done, how would you like to be remembered? It’s sort of a funny question, isn’t it? Asking how you want to be remembered after you’re gone. No one ever knows how they’re remembered after they’re gone, nor does anyone ever experience it. And yet, for some reason, we still ask ourselves these sorts of questions. It’s a paradox, really; to want something after I’m dead, but only be able to want anything while I’m alive. The question is really more about what I want to imagine while I’m alive then, isn’t it? What I want to convince myself my life can be for beyond my own life; seeing as how I can only imagine beyond my own life while my own life still exists? If I were to humor the question, though, I don’t think I would want to claim any sort of banal, grandiose answers. I don’t think I would want to say that I want to be remembered as significant, or influential, or smart, or famous, or wealthy, or powerful, or successful, or that I changed the world in some way. All of that would suggest that I can know what any of that even means in the bigger picture. In truth, I don’t know what it means to be influential in a world that lacks clear direction. I don’t know what it means to be wealthy in a world filled with poverty. I don’t know what it means to be powerful in a universe that trumps everyone and everything. And I don’t know what it means to be smart or successful or to change the world as a member of a species that’s restricted from understanding what anything might really mean or cause. I suppose I am attracted to these things as much as the next person, but I cannot say with certain honesty that I believe that in the end, any of these things are worth being remembered for. I guess the next answer would be that I want to be remembered as someone who tried. Someone who tried their best to care. To help. To love. To be ok. To air on the side of sympathy and compassion as best I could. To be a good friend, good son, father, and husband. Someone who lived honestly, with both conviction and a willingness to adapt in what they think and believe. Someone who contributed towards something they enjoyed and believed in simply because they could. But the truth is, history is coated with innumerable amounts of people who lived with these qualities, and mostly none of them are remembered by anyone at all. Perhaps being remembered isn’t all that important then, if most people aren’t remembered for what’s important.

I have been all over the world cooking and eating and training under extraordinary chefs. And the two food guys I would most like to go on a road trip with are Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlmann, both of whom I have met, and who are genuinely awesome guys, hysterically funny and easy to be with. But as much as I want to be the Batgirl in that trio, I fear that I would be woefully unprepared. Because an essential part of the food experience that those two enjoy the most is stuff that, quite frankly, would make me ralph. I don't feel overly bad about the offal thing. After all, variety meats seem to be the one area that people can get a pass on. With the possible exception of foie gras, which I wish like heckfire I liked, but I simply cannot get behind it, and nothing is worse than the look on a fellow foodie's face when you pass on the pate. I do love tongue, and off cuts like oxtails and cheeks, but please, no innards. Blue or overly stinky cheeses, cannot do it. Not a fan of raw tomatoes or tomato juice- again I can eat them, but choose not to if I can help it. Ditto, raw onions of every variety (pickled is fine, and I cannot get enough of them cooked), but I bonded with Scott Conant at the James Beard Awards dinner, when we both went on a rant about the evils of raw onion. I know he is often sort of douchey on television, but he was nice to me, very funny, and the man makes the best freaking spaghetti in tomato sauce on the planet. I have issues with bell peppers. Green, red, yellow, white, purple, orange. Roasted or raw. Idk. If I eat them raw I burp them up for days, and cooked they smell to me like old armpit. I have an appreciation for many of the other pepper varieties, and cook with them, but the bell pepper? Not my friend. Spicy isn't so much a preference as a physical necessity. In addition to my chronic and severe gastric reflux, I also have no gallbladder. When my gallbladder and I divorced several years ago, it got custody of anything spicier than my own fairly mild chili, Emily's sesame noodles, and that plastic Velveeta-Ro-Tel dip that I probably shouldn't admit to liking. I'm allowed very occasional visitation rights, but only at my own risk. I like a gentle back-of-the-throat heat to things, but I'm never going to meet you for all-you-can-eat buffalo wings. Mayonnaise squicks me out, except as an ingredient in other things. Avocado's bland oiliness, okra's slickery slime, and don't even get me started on runny eggs. I know. It's mortifying.

He called back with an incredible report: there were people lined up around the store already. Wow, I thought. Wow! Wow didn’t begin to cover it. People lined up on two floors of the store to talk to Chris and get their books signed, hours before he was even scheduled to arrive. Chris was overwhelmed when he got there, and so was I. The week before, he’d been just another guy walking down the street. Now, all of a sudden he was famous. Except he was still the same Chris Kyle, humble and a bit abashed, ready to shake hands and pose for a picture, and always, at heart, a good ol’ boy. “I’m so nervous,” confided one of the people on the line as he approached Chris. “I’ve been waiting for three hours just to see you.” “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Chris. “Waitin’ all that time and come to find out there’s just another redneck up here.” The man laughed, and so did Chris. It was something he’d repeat, in different variations, countless times that night and over the coming weeks. We stayed for three or four hours that first night, far beyond what had been advertised, with Chris signing each book, shaking each hand, and genuinely grateful for each person who came. For their part, they were anxious not just to meet him but to thank him for his service to our country-and by extension, the service of every military member whom they couldn’t personally thank. From the moment the book was published, Chris became the son, the brother, the nephew, the cousin, the kid down the street whom they couldn’t personally thank. In a way, his outstanding military record was beside the point-he was a living, breathing patriot who had done his duty and come home safe to his wife and kids. Thanking him was people’s way of thanking everyone in uniform. And, of course, the book was an interesting read. It quickly became a commercial success beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, including the publisher’s. The hardcover debuted at number two on the New York Times bestseller list, then rose to number one and stayed there for more than two months. It’s remained a fixture on the bestseller lists ever since, and has been translated into twenty-four languages worldwide. It was a good read, and it had a profound effect on a lot of people. A lot of the people who bought it weren’t big book readers, but they ended up engrossed. A friend of ours told us that he’d started reading the book one night while he was taking a bath with his wife. She left, went to bed, and fell asleep. She woke up at three or four and went into the bathroom. Her husband was still there, in the cold water, reading. The funny thing is, Chris still could not have cared less about all the sales. He’d done his assignment, turned it in, and got his grade. Done deal.

after us … or maybe they’d put their safeties back on, and we’d get to watch a bunch of smiling Titans following like drones? They could get on tiny motorcycles then follow the RV. That’d be funny, wouldn’t it? They’d look like those famous fat twins on their bikes. Alien comedy at its best.” Now Andreus looked angry. He’d been wearing a damp rag on his head since they’d left the RV in one of the few places with overhead cover a few miles back. Piper kept wanting to make babushka jokes, but she couldn’t quite manage. The man

This is what happened when I cofounded LinkedIn. The key business model innovations for LinkedIn, including the two-way nature of the relationships and filling professionals’ need for a business-oriented online identity, didn’t just happen organically. They were the result of much thought and reflection, and I drew on the experiences I had when founding SocialNet, one of the first online social networks, nearly a decade before the creation of LinkedIn. But life isn’t always so neat. Many companies, even famous and successful ones, have to develop their business model innovation after they have already commenced operations. PayPal didn’t have a business model when it began operations (I was a key member of the PayPal executive team). We were growing exponentially, at 5 percent per day, and we were losing money on every single transaction we processed. The funny thing is that some of our critics called us insane for paying customers bonuses to refer their friends. Those referral bonuses were actually brilliant, because their cost was so much lower than the standard cost of acquiring new financial services customers via advertising. (We’ll discuss the power and importance of this kind of viral marketing later on.) The insanity, in fact, was that we were allowing our users to accept credit card payments, sticking PayPal with the cost of paying 3 percent of each transaction to the credit card processors, while charging our users nothing. I remember once telling my old college friend and PayPal cofounder/ CEO Peter Thiel, “Peter, if you and I were standing on the roof of our office and throwing stacks of hundred-dollar bills off the edge as fast as our arms could go, we still wouldn’t be losing money as quickly as we are right now.” We ended up solving the problem by charging businesses to accept payments, much as the credit card processors did, but funding those payments using automated clearinghouse (ACH) bank transactions, which cost a fraction of the charges associated with the credit card networks. But if we had waited until we had solved this problem before blitzscaling, I suspect we wouldn’t have become the market leader.

I could see the reporter scribbling away as if his life depended on it. I suppose for him it was the scoop of a lifetime. Here he’d probably been sitting around for months doing the Kibbencook courthouse “beat,” and seeing nothing more interesting than a drunk driver. And now, isn’t it funny, but I wonder if Mr. Alterman didn’t have something to do with getting that reporter into the courtroom? I hadn’t thought about that before, but this case made Mr. Alterman famous. He was in Time magazine even.

What’s THAT?!” Laurent screeched as the bushes directly next to them began to move. A hundred things ran through Madi’s mind: that serial killers really should choose more productive ways to spend their time, that her sister Sarah was going to be out-of-control when their parents broke the news Madi’d been murdered, that it was a really stupid twist of fate that Madi’d found the man of her dreams only to lose him, and lastly— That really looks like a squirrel. “RUN!” Laurent bellowed as the little creature took two bouncing steps toward them and stopped, staring at them with interest.

Morecambe and Wise, the famous team of Northern comedians, used to complain about the propensity of Yorkshire audiences to “zip their teeth up,” as they put it. Eric Morecambe claimed one man in Leeds said to him, “Ee, lad, thou wert so funny tonight I almost had to laff.

listen to what funny man and actor Jim Carrey had to say about fame and fortune: “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.

You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star." -Friedrich Nietzsche  

My biggest fear is that Germans will suddenly be relaxed and in a good mood. We need our unfriendliness. We need our bad moods. We need the tantrums when someone takes our parking spot. It's the foundation of our world-famous literature." -Harald Schmidt  

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to pull myself together before I mingle with other people. Otherwise they would think my mind is rather weird." -Anne Frank  

Media censorship is a prohibition of words and pictures. The war on drugs is a complete failure, and so is the American war on words. When you forbid a word, you give it power. Self-proclaimed rebels will use words like shit or fuck, simply to shock and sound cool." -Oliver Markus  

Well, I thought it was funny. -Stephen Colbert

German is a much more precise language than English. Americans throw the word love around for everything: I love my wife! I love all my friends! I love rock music! I love the rain! I love comic books! I love peanut butter! The word you use to describe your feelings for your wife should not be the same word you use to describe your feelings for peanut butter. In German, there are a dozen different words that describe varying degrees of liking something a lot. Germans almost never use the word love, unless they mean a deep romantic love. I have never told my parents I love them, because it would sound melodramatic, inappropriate, and almost incestuous. In German, you tell your mother that you hold her very dear, not that you are in love with her." -Oliver Markus  

Adolf Hitler and J.R.R. Tolkien fought on opposing sides in the Battle of the Somme in World War 1

333 Texas has the highest speed limit of any US state – you can drive down the Texas State Highway 130 at 85mph

Funny the distinctions that grown-ups make about lying. If a kid does it, then it's automatically bad, bad, bad. If a grown-up they don't like does it and gets found out, the same rules apply, onlymore so. If they do it themselves, however, it is perfectly understandable and is one of those famous "white lies" you hear so much about.

Reviewed by Vincent Dublado for Readers' Favorite Another Time in a Vacuum by Roland Burisch is a witty fantasy adventure of anachronistic proportions. Meet Monty, a timetraveling historian who travels back to 1673. Imagine the thrill of excitement that greets him as he meets one of history’s most important diarists, Samuel Pepys. He musters the courage to tell Pepys that he has important information, but the eminent diarist is suspicious that he could be an extortionist. Monty tells Pepys that he is from the future and that he is familiar with the contents of Pepys’s diaries. Monty introduces the diarist to his mobile phone to lend authenticity to his claim. Monty remembers that Sir Isaac Newton is alive in the same period, with which Pepys concurs, unless Newton is beheaded for heresy. But Monty tells him that Newton will go down in history for his work. This fills Pepys with disbelief. Monty brings the two men into the present, and these two historical figures will witness the contemporary period with awe and bewilderment, an adventure that they will fill with many questions. Another Time in a Vacuum is a fascinating time-travel adventure that is intelligent, witty, and at times, sad. While this novel takes the idea of time travel as an essential element in the storyline, it is more about a comparative look at the lifestyle and norms of the past with the present. It is inevitable that the two famous men will not understand Monty initially. But Roland Burisch equips his plot with confidence in the intelligence of Pepys and Newton. They eventually understand why Monty exists in their time without many ramifications about the historical timeline getting altered. Burisch wisely hinges on the mechanics of dialogue and the interaction of the trio for the plot. It is also one of the reasons why this novel works because you like the quirks of the characters. They are wise, funny, and fish out of water. It sounds like a story that you will enjoy reading. It is.

Reviewed by Vincent Dublado for Readers' Favorite Another Time in a Vacuum by Roland Burisch is a witty fantasy adventure of anachronistic proportions. Meet Monty, a timetraveling historian who travels back to 1673. Imagine the thrill of excitement that greets him as he meets one of history’s most important diarists, Samuel Pepys. He musters the courage to tell Pepys that he has important information, but the eminent diarist is suspicious that he could be an extortionist. Monty tells Pepys that he is from the future and that he is familiar with the contents of Pepys’s diaries. Monty introduces the diarist to his mobile phone to lend authenticity to his claim. Monty remembers that Sir Isaac Newton is alive in the same period, with which Pepys concurs, unless Newton has been beheaded for heresy. But Monty tells him that Newton will go down in history for his work. This fills Pepys with disbelief. Monty brings the two men into the present, and these two historical figures will witness the contemporary period with awe and bewilderment, an adventure that they will fill with many questions. Another Time in a Vacuum is a fascinating time-travel adventure that is intelligent, witty, and at times, sad. While this novel takes the idea of time travel as an essential element in the storyline, it is more about a comparative look at the lifestyle and norms of the past with the present. It is inevitable that the two famous men will not understand Monty initially. But Roland Burisch equips his plot with confidence in the intelligence of Pepys and Newton. They eventually understand why Monty exists in their time without many ramifications about the historical timeline getting altered. Burisch wisely hinges on the mechanics of dialogue and the interaction of the trio for the plot. It is also one of the reasons why this novel works because you like the quirks of the characters. They are wise, funny, and fish out of water. It sounds like a story that you will enjoy reading. It is.

Three years later, my mother bought a page in the back of the yearbook, as was customary for graduating seniors. On it, she put funny baby photos and well wishes, but tucked inconspicuously throughout the page were little quotes from Mark Twain about the absurdity of uniforms and the danger of blind obedience, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s famous “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” My mother’s final parting jab.