Roy Blount, Jr. Quotes
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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.
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That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp.
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In the beginning, Atlanta was without form, and void; and it still is.
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According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.
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To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. I don't remember what I was like before I learned my ABC's, but for as long as I can remember I have made them with my fingers and felt them in my bones.
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Usage ain't always a matter of ought.
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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.
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When I was a little kid, of course, I was brown all summer. That's because I was free as a bird- nothing to do but catch bugs all day.
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Doctors and lawyers must go to school for years and years, often with little sleep and with great sacrifice to their first wives.
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Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo Clinic.
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New York walking isn't exercise: it's a continually showing make-your-own movie.
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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.
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People don't necessarily want or need to be done unto as you would have them do unto you. They want to be done unto as they want to be done unto.
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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.
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I do some eccentric dancing.
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If a cat spoke, it would say things like, 'Hey, I don't see the problem here.'
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I think a writer is not an ideal husband... Writers tend to get off into their own heads and not notice the people that they're living with, or they get irritable with the people that they're living with when the people insist on being noticed.
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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.
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Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ.
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Certainly people have said a lot of deeply unfortunate and stupid things in Southern accents, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the accent itself.
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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.
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Twitter. It's not a good sound, is it? If it were worth doing, there would be a better word for it.
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Contemporary American children, if they are old enough to grasp the concept of Santa Claus by Thanksgiving, are able to see through it by December 15th.
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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.