pure science with a splash of black cat

I swear Jack thinks Brick is lying about the "wife and kids" thing

Brick: You're making ME grumpy.
Jack: Well, you gotta pity the guy, he's got the ball and chain right here for 82.

The world would not be in such a snarl,
had Marx been Groucho instead of Karl. Irving Berlin’s birthday telegram to Groucho Marx, 1961

This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I shall not put. Winston Churchill in a note to the editor regarding one of his manuscripts, after the editor awkwardly reworded one of Churchill’s sentences to avoid ending it in a preposition.

Suggest you upstick books asswards. Ernest Hemingway in a telegraph to his employer in 1928, responding to a request for the complete accounts of Hemingway’s expenses on assignment in Constantinople.

I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me. Max Reger, in a note to music critic Rudolph Louis, responding to Louis’s review of one of Reger’s performances in 1906.

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood. George Santayana

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter. Blaise Pascal

It is sometimes of interest to a composer to recall the original impulse – the ‘creative germ’ – of a compositional project. In the case of Ancient Voices I felt this impulse to be the climactic final words of the last song: ‘… and I will go very far … to ask Christ the Lord to give me back my ancient soul of a child.’ George Crumb on the inspiration for Ancient Voices of Children: A Cycle of Songs on Texts by Federico García Lorca

He was one of the most feared right-handed hitters for a long time in this league. The amount of respect he has from peers speaks to the value of the offensive player he was. Paul Molitor on Edgar Martinez (via ESPN.com)