-
Pete Rose is too rich a character to fit on a bronze plaque. He requires a good, trenchant, poignant (ah, Petey) book, and this is it.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
People may think of Southern humor in terms of missing teeth and outhouse accidents, but the best of it is a rich vein running through the best of Southern literature.
Roy Blount, Jr.
-
According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
Obama's got a great sense of humor, but mainly he has a great thinking presence, which is uncommon. It's hard to imagine being able to do, think over answers and deliver them on television. If I were president I would constantly be spluttering.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
The North isn't a place. It's just a direction out of the South.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
I heard on public radio recently, there's a thing called Weed Dating. Singles get together in a garden and weed and then they take turns, they keep matching up with other people. Two people will weed down one row and switch over with two other people. It's in Vermont. I don't think I'd be very good at Weed Dating.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
I like weeding, but I tend to think of it as a solitary activity.
Roy Blount, Jr.
-
I think what's really hard is making sense and making what you write clear and smooth-flowing.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
I studied French in high school and German in college and I once took a 24-hour Italian crash course. English has by far the most words in it of any other language. Our money might not be worth anything anymore, but the language is.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
I prefer my oysters fried; that way I know my oysters died.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
Obama's the most thoughtful-sounding president I can remember. He seems to be saying what he wants to say, and that is a great relief. He always sounds like he's thinking about what he's saying while he's saying it, and that's a rare thing in politicians.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
When I weed, I like to get off into my own head. For one thing, my wife plants and I have trouble telling which plants are weeds and which are my favorite plants. So I tend to hop around and grab the weeds that I know are weeds. So I don't weed all that linearly. I tend to weed haphazardly.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
Any given generation gives the next generation advice that the given generation should have been given by the previous generation but now it's too late.
Roy Blount, Jr.
-
Cats have intercepted my footsteps at the ankle for so long that my gait, both at home and on tour, has been compared to that of a man wading through low surf.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
It was easy to make fun of Bush, but it was sort of like shooting fish in a barrel and it didn't really feel all that good because it was so easy to do. I would much rather live under a thoughtful president. Even if it makes it harder to be funny about politics, it makes it more interesting to be funny about politics.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
It's my belief that sanity lies in realizing that reality is not exactly what we had in mind.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
Usage ain't always a matter of ought.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
I do some eccentric dancing.
Roy Blount, Jr.
-
I always wanted to win the Super Bowl so I could take it and hold it and see what lies beyond it. I think it may be the sun.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
A picture's worth a thousand words? A library card's worth millions.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
Going to Vanderbilt did a lot of things for me, and one of the things it cured me of was the need to follow college football.
Roy Blount, Jr. -
I think writer's block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out.
Roy Blount, Jr.