Memorable Lines from Jims Picks:
Updated 3 days a
week
Memorable Lines 2009 Archives
Just like great scenes from the movies...here are some
passages that linger with me. Enjoy!!! (Jim Agnew)
Sept. 1:
Fuck off, you French frog!"
...Charles Bukowski to Barbet Schroeder, who went on to
direct Barfly. (Schroeder was Swiss/German).
Aug. 30:
 "People
want to see the girl next door," Louis B. Mayer told Joan
Crawford. And she said, "Louis, if they want to see the girl
next door, tell them to go next door."
Aug. 27:
"It's the spouting whale that gets harpooned first."
...Norwegian expression...
Aug. 25:
 "We
don't negotiate with assassins."
...Rudolph Giuliani...
Aug. 23:
"Elwood, in this world you must be oh so clever, or oh so
pleasant."
...Rose.. from film Harvey...
Aug. 20:
 "What
a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner."
...Colette...
Aug. 18:
"I can no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat
but I recognize the object by the symptoms it evokes."
...A.E. Housman...
Aug. 16:
 "All
men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever
different means they employ, they all tend to this end."
...Blaise Pascal...
Aug 13:
"if you ask what jazz is, you'll never know."
...Louis Armstrong...
Aug. 11:
 "I
know it when I see it."
...Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart on obscenity...
Aug. 9:
"There's nowhere to go when you retire from movies, except
oblivion."
...Tennessee Williams...Sweet Bird Of Youth...
Aug. 6:
 "First
you dream, and then you die."
...Cornell Woolrich...
Aug. 4:
"The desire to perform a work which will endure, which will
survive him, is the origin of man's superiority over all other
creatures..."
...Jules Verne...
Aug. 2:
"When one lives among madmen, one should train as a maniac."
...Alexander Dumas...
July 30:
 'The
house of fiction has many windows."
...Henry James...
July 28:
"There's nowhere to go when you retire from movies, except
oblivion."
...Tennessee Williams...Sweet Bird Of Youth...
July 26:
 "Don't
forget you're always fighting. The other fellow is booze. You're
evading, always evading, but one of these day, unless you're
careful, he's going to nail you."
...Jimmy Breslin...
July 23:
"I don't have to retouch anymore because I know how to
retouch with light."
...Gianni Bozzacchi...
July 21:
 "A
movie is like a person, either you trust it or you don't."
...Mike Nichols...
July 19:
"Where I was wrong was in believing it would last."
...Richard Burton...
July 16:
 "She's
as wistful as an iron foundry."
...Oscar Levant on Debbie Reynolds...
July 14:
"Shallow men believe in luck."
...Ralph Waldo Emerson...
July 12:
"A large ego can be generous and enabling because of its lack
of envy."
...Tony Morrison...
July 9:
 "Booboise"
(revenge of the envious)
...H.L. Menken...
July 7:
"Work, the only drug."
...Andre Malraux...
July 2:
 "Be
harsh."
...Admiral Karl Donitz, general orders to all U-boat
commanders, 1942."
June 30:
"For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and our
world islanders in its stream of stars."
...Henry Beston...
June 28:
"What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated
lunch counter if he doesn't earn enough money to buy a cup of
coffee?"
...Martin Luther King...
June 25:
"Do the thing and you will have the power."
...Emerson...
June 23:
 "Slavery
was commonplace in Angola with perhaps a quarter of the
population in bondage. Men were sold and traded like cattle. The
slaves only way out was to commit suicide, escape or kill his
master."
...In The Place Of Justice by Wilbert Rideau (Alfred
A. Knopf)...
June 21:
There was a hush. Nobody breathed, nobody moved for a moment.
And when they did it was in slow motion. I felt almost that I'd
never seen a movie before--and I have't seen one since."
.....Evelyn Keyes on the Atlanta premiere of "Gone With The
Wind."
June 18:
"A poor memory."
...Ingrid Bergman's formula for happiness...
June 16:
 "He
sent his clothes out to be cleaned and rumpled."
...Vivien Leigh on Elia Kazan...
June 14:
"Love fades."
...Woody Allen...
June 11:
 "It
was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking
thirteen."
.....George Orwell...Nineteen Eighty-Four.....
June 9:
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
.....J.R.R. Tolkien...The Hobbitt...
June 7:
 "From
now on, forget happiness. Now it's just about saving the
remains, the wreakage, the appearance."
...Henry Ibsen...A Doll's House...
June 4:
 Strange
travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."
...Kurt Vonnegut...
June 2:
"Without Ray Bradbury there would be no Stephen King."
...Stephen King...
May 30::
 "It
has bothered me all my life that I don't paint like everyone
else."
.....Henri Matisse...
May 28:
"Green dice rolled across the green table, struck the rim
together, and bounced back."
...Robert B. Parker's favorite line from Dashiell Hammett's
The Glass Key...
May 26:
"Unblemished, let me live and die unknown.
Give me an honest fame or give me none."
...Alexander Pope...
May 24:
"The darkest mystery of faith."
...Pope Benedict XVI on Christ's crucifixation and
resurrection...
May 21:
 ..."the
starless midnight of racism."...
...Dr. Martin Luther King...
May 19:
"Better to go down dignified with boughten
friendship at your side than none at all. Provide, provide!"
...Robert Frost...
May 17:
 "Olivier's
face became stonelike, his basilisk's eyes impenetrable as
granite. I had done something irreparable. All he said at the
time was. "How wonderful of you to have been so honest with me."
What he actually meant was "You will never work for me again."
Laurence Olivier never forgave a slight."
...Clare Bloom...Leaving a Doll's House...
April 30:
 "The
burdens of office stagger the imagination and convert vanity to
prayer."
...Adlai Stevenson...
April 28:
"Casting is destiny."
...Warren Beatty...
April 26:
 "Richard
Burton wrote in his diary that Mike Nichols was one of only two
men he had met (the other was Noel Coward) who had 'the capacity
to change the world when they walk into a room. They are both as
bland as butter and as brilliant as diamonds.'"
...Mark Harris...Pictures At A Revolution...
April 23:
"Where do I draw the line? I draw the line at truth."
...Ben Bradlee...
April 21:
 "Most
of the things doing in the world had been declared impossible
before they were done."
...Louis D. Brandeis...
April 19:
"Genius is the ability to prolong one's childhood."
...H.L. Mencken...
April 16:
 "Beware
of those whom the desire to punish is strong."
...Nietzsche...
April 14:
"For it is wisdom to believe the heart."
...George Santayana...
April 12:
 "The
childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day."
...Milton...Paradise Lost...
April 9:
"Events, dear boy, events."
...Harold Macmillan on a statesman greatest challenge"
April 7:
"No one, no matter how well informed,
can possibly know what goes on inside
a marriage except the two principals
themselves."
April 5:
 "There
is no frigate like a book to take us Lands away."
...Emely Dickinson...
April 2:
"Nothing is quite so mysterious and silent as a dark
theater...a night without stars."
...Clifford Odets...Georgie...The Country Girl."
March 31:
 "Silence,
Exile and Cunning."
James Joyce...Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Man...
March 29:
"Sam Peckinpah once told me that if I wanted to learn what
film acting was about, I should watch Steve McQueen's eyes in
close-up."
...Ali MacGraw...Moving Pictures
March 26:
 "Poems
are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree."
...Joyce Kilmer...Trees...
March 24:
"Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplify, simplify."
...Henry David Thoreau....Walden..
March 22:
 "You
don't know a woman until you have had a letter from her."
...Ada Leverson...Tenderhooks...
March 19:
"Tis strange--but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger
than fiction."
...Lord Bryon...Don Juan...
March 17:
 "There
is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness and
death."
...Fran Lebowitz...
March 15:
"We understand more than we know--a deep human truth,
contradicting quantitative or scientific 'logic'".
...Pascal...
March 12:
 "I'm
a mystic. A very rational Jewish atheist mystic."
...William Tenn...
March 10:
"Hell Is other people."
...Jean Paul Sartre...
March 8:
 "The
hatred of relatives is the most violent."
...Tacitus...
March 5:
"We're all in this alone."
...Lily Tomlin...
March 3:
"You don't know anything about a woman until you meet her in
court."
...Norman Mailer...
March 1:
 "She
cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook."
...Tommy Manville...
Feb. 26:
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."
...Napoleon...
Feb. 24:
 "Every
day people are straying away from the church and going back to
God"
...Lenny Bruce,,,
Feb. 22:
"In war, as in prostitution, amateurs are often better than
professionals."
...Napoleon...
Feb. 19:
"They used to ban my books, but now when I go there, Irish
people are courteous to my face, though rather slanderous behind
my back."
...Edna O'Brien...The Girl With the Green Eyes."
Feb. 17:
 "No
Spring, nor Summer Beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one Autumnal face."
...John Dunne...
Feb. 15:
"Time comes from the future, which does not yet exist, into
the present which has no duration, and goes in to the past,
which has ceased to exist."
...St. Augustine...
Feb. 12:
"The distinction between past, present and future is only an
illusion, however persistent."
...Einstein...
Feb. 10:
"Watson: But the dog did nothing in the night...Holmes:
That was the significent episode."
Feb. 8:
 "Enjoy
wine and women, and don't be afraid/God has compassion".
...Omar Khayyam...
Feb. 5:
"What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and
evil."
...Nietzsche...(Clarence Darrow's favorite line)
Feb. 3:
"There ain't no answer.
There ain't going to be any answer.
There never has been an answer.
That's the answer."
Feb. 1:
 "The
universe is infinite in every direction."
...Freeman Dyson...
Jan. 29:
In the midst of winter. I found there was within me, an
invincible summer."
Jan. 27:
"You cannot understand what is going on in the world unless you
understand science deeply."
...Arthur Koestler...
Jan. 25:
 "The
time of the toad."
...Dalton Trumbo on the HUAC committee...
Jan. 22:
"the banality of change."
...Hannah Arendt...
Jan. 20:
'If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen
very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being
committed this way to so long a voyage...But when a man suspects
any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved
in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions
even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said
nothing, and tried to think nothing..."
...Herman Melville...Moby Dick...
Jan. 18:
"Feign weakness."
...ancient Chinese adage...
Jan. 15:
 "Perhaps
the truth depends on a walk around the lake."
...Wallace Stevens...
Jan. 13:
"The eye with which I look at God is the same eye with which
God looks at me."
...Meister Eckhart...
Jan. 11:
 "The
only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict
with itself."
...William Faulkner...
Jan. 8:
"During the 1958 hearings, from time to time, he
directed the same shriveling look at my brother. And now and
then, after a protracted, particularly evil glower, he did a
most peculiar thing: he would wink at me. I can't explain it.
Maybe a psychiatrist would recognize the symptoms."
...Robert Kennedy on Jimmy Hoffa...The Enemy Within...
Jan. 6:
 "To
influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not
think his natural thoughts or burn with his natural passions.
His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such
things as sins, are borrowed."
...Oscar Wilde...
Jan. 4:
 "But
I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of
transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were
going, and went on in blindless and cowardice, to their fates."
...Ayn Rand...Anthem...
|
Enola
Gay and her two escorts taxied
to their runways. From the North
Field control tower William
Laurence, science editor of the
New York Times, and the sole
newspaperman covering the story,
watched intently, at General
Farrell's side, as Enola Gay
slowly rumbled down the runway.
She accelerated to 180 miles an
hour, but burdened by her extra
weight, seemed earthbound. The
onlookers, remembering the four
Superfortresses that had crashed
the night before, strained to
help lift the plane into the
air. 
In
Ireland the British army
found itself in an
impossible situation. With
local support for the rebels
so pervasive, the army could
not fight a guerilla war and
win. After a year morale was
exceedingly low, and army
reports back to England
suggest that many officers
were feeling hopeless. Thus
the idea of sending in
auxiliary forces to back up
the army and the police was
suggested in January 1920.
British Secretary For War
Winston Churchill was the
mastermind behind this
decision between English and
the Irish. 
The
Top Ten List of Post-Stroke
Indignities--Institutional
Edition...
He
gave me a little lecture about
breaking a conspiracy like
Watergate. "You build
convincingly from the outer
edges in, you get ten times the
evidence you need against the
Hunts and Liddys. They feel
hopelessly finished--they may
not talk right away, but the
grip is on them. Then you move
up and do the same thing at the
next level. If you shoot too
high and miss, then everybody
feels more secure. Lawyers work
this way. I'm sure reporters
must too." I recall he gave me a
look as if to say I did not
belong in that category of smart
reporters. "You put the
investigation back months. It
puts everyone on the
defensive--editors, FBI agents,
everybody has to go into a
crouch after this."
Meanwhile
Hausner also had to prepare the
legal arguments. Here, at least,
he could delegate responsibility
to members of his prosecution
team. It comprised Gabriel Bach,
an English-trained lawyer aged
thirty-four, who was seconded
from the Ministry of Justice as
adviser to Bureau 06, and Yaacov
Bar-or, the forty-five-year-old
District Attorney of Tel Aviv.
Thanks to the furor over the
kidnapping, Hausner knew he
would have to justify Israel's
right to try Eichmann at all.
And he had to anticipate that
Dr. Servatius would challenge
the legal basis of the
prosecution. When Servatius had
defended Nazis at Nuremburg he
had routinely argued that the
charges of crimes against
humanity and the commission of
genocide rested on retrospective
legislation of dubious standing.
To rebut this line of attack
Hausner drew on the venerable
talents of Dr Jacob Robinson,
aged seventy-one, who had
assisted Justice Robert Jackson
at Nuremburg. Since then
Robinson had served as legal
adviser to the Israeli
delegation to the UN, and was an
expert in international law.
Ultimately, however, the onus
fell on Hausner's shoulders and
no one else's. In desperation he
ended up locking himself away in
a Tel Aviv hotel for six weeks
'with two carloads of books and
files, working almost around the
clock in complete isolation'.
Great coverage, Jim! Thanks!
Caroline Howell- Amadeus Press