I fear one day I’ll get a knock at my front door, and I’ll answer it to find myself standing there. Then I’ll hear myself say, “Hi, I’m from the future, and I’m here to destroy you.” But that is irrational. The future me isn’t out to ...
I want to write the world’s worst cookbook, which I’ll title: “The World’s Worst Cookbook.” It’ll feature recipes from “Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich” (peanut butter, jelly, and bread), to “Roasted Roadkill and Hitchhiker’s Sur...
A female cop in my dream observes a shuffle, and takes note, but doesn’t fully see the bank robbery I have just committed during the planned distraction. All she sees is a man with a lot of money and draws the wrong conclusion—that I am more hand...
The best way to get America back to work, and reduce our deficit, is hire all the photographers in the country, position them on street corners, and have them take pictures of all the license plates of red-light runners, who will then receive a fine ...
This is what I believe to be the progress of a writer. You write 10 things, of which one of them will be great. You then write 11 things, of which two of them will be great. Then you write 12 things, of which four of them will be great. Then you writ...
It is a tedious cliché (and, unlike many clichés, it isn't even true) that science concerns itself with how questions, but only theology is equipped to answer why questions. What on Earth is a why question? Not every English sentence beginning with...
A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politic...
You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring th...
My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done. This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of informati...
He'd kept his figure despite being past his first youth. Pretty good for nearly forty. Who was she fooling? She knew quite well that he was thirty-five and a half, exactly five years older than she. Their birthdays were two days apart. It was absurd ...
Failure to recognize one's own absolute significance is equivalent to a denial of human worth; this is a basic error and the origin of all unbelief. If one is so faint-hearted that he is powerless even to believe in himself, how can he believe in any...
Just as sex is a God-given instinct for the prolongation of the human race, so the desire for property as a prolongation of one's ego is a natural right sanctioned by natural law. A person is free on the inside because he can call his soul his own; h...
The where the story happened was a world on the back of four elephants perched on the shell of a giant turtle. That's the advantage of space. It's big enough to hold practically , and so, eventually, it does. People think that it is strange to have a...
Equally serious is the complaint that psychoanalysis as a medical practice is a form of oppressive social control, labelling individuals and forcing them to conform to arbitrary definitions of ‘normality’. This charge is in fact more usually aime...
Silence is wittier than any jest. Thou wanteth to express thy feelings with eloquence and grace? Drop thy jaw boldly and beautifully. There, thou’rt starting to get it. But hang out thy tongue more. Let the drool strands drip down thy chin and give...
I never got to take Agatha to the prom. I never took anybody. At the time I was OK with going alone, but now it pisses me off. Since even Sam said no to me, and Sam was the school’s only hermaphrodite, I decided to wear a tuxedo dress. I was prepar...
I design, manufacture, distribute, and sell elevator buttons. I specialize in the fourth floor. And I don’t mean to brag, but I’m such a good salesman that I could sell one of my fourth-floor elevator buttons to the owner of a three-story buildin...
Oh, there are so many ways to categorize and catalogue things. Alphabetically, numerically, by date, weight, height, color, monetary value, sentimental value, or by Orafoura’s spiritual index. For me, I order things to subdue the overwhelming feeli...
Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality-call it an alternate reality-to prove the reality of events. To what extent facts we recognize as such really are as they seem, and to what extent these ar...
If yage were a word that meant “maturity,” then every single woman I’ve dated has been at least twice my yage.
I sing karaoke like I drink coffee. If my words come out a bit gargled, relax, that’s precisely how Hootie and the Blowfish is supposed to sound.