Neil Gaiman is the man.

"Dangerous. Not Dangerous. Same thing."
-- Neil Gaiman, Mirrormask

Quote of the day

"Potential events are often more important than real events."

-- Don DeLillo, Great Jones Street

Luminescent intestinal tracks

"I hope no one is offended by the concept of glowing bowels."

-- Sean Cullen, Hamish X and the Cheese Pirates

Land.

'Buy land, they're not making it anymore.'

— Mark Twain

I miss George Carlin.

"In your own words. You hear it in classrooms. And courtrooms. They'll say, 'Tell us in your own words...'

Do you have your own words? Personally, I'm using the ones everybody else has been using.

Next time they tell you to say something in your own words, say, 'Nigflot blorny quando floon.'

— George Carlin

Of course, if you do indeed say "Nigflot blorny quando floon," you'l be using George Carlin's words. Not your own. But you get the picture.

What doth maketh the boy?

"A boy is a man in miniature, and though he may sometimes exhibit notable virtue, as well as characteristics that seem to be charming because they are childlike, he is also schemer, self-seeker, traitor, Judas, crook, and villain -- in short, a man. Oh, these autobiographies in which the writer postures and simpers as a David Copperfield or a Huck Finn! False, false as harlots' oaths!"

-- Robertson Davies as Dunstan 'Corky' Ramsay in Fifth Business

The Divine Number 9

"The most striking landmark on his face is the nose. It is not a nose to trifle with."

--- Roy MacSkimming, on Gordie Howe, from Gordie: A Hockey Legend, page 7.

Love, exciting and new...

A couple of quotes about love that I dig at the moment:

A love story is not about those who lose their heart but about those who find that sullen inhabitant who, when it is stumbled upon, means the body can fool no one, can fool nothing — not the wisdom of sleep or the habit of social graces. It is a consuming of oneself and the past.
— Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient (page 97 in my copy).

The saddest part of a broken heart
isn't the ending, so much as the start
— Feist, Let It Die from the album of the same name.

Love, exciting and new.
Come aboard, we're expecting you.
— Jack Jones, The Love Boat Theme

Missing: one dream, answers to 'Epiphone'

"You write stuff down, don't you? Like, in a journal, and everything? Dude, can you pinpoint when you lost your dream?"

-- Craig Norris, CBC3's R3-30

Attitude

While I'm not much, generally, on Christian fundamentalist dogma, occasionally these bible-toting jokers get something right. Case in point: I've been thumping the idea of perspective, of attitude, into my students for years. The Chancellor of the Dallas Theological Seminary, Charles Swindoll, in addition to his right-wing, capital R Republican views, actually happens to make sense when it comes to how we, as people, can utterly alter our lives through the adjustment of something firmly within our own control: attitude.

Italics and bolds below are mine, but the words are all Swindoll. (A shout out to Taby, the new teacher in the staff room, for passing this passage along.)

Attitude
By Charles Swindoll

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you... We are in charge of our Attitudes.