Potent Quotables

Whilst playing tourist in Newport, Rhode Island, last week, I visited The Breakers, the vacation home built above the sea cliffs by railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt (better known to his friends as the Commodore). This 70-room “cottage,” where the super-rich Vanderbilts summered, is now maintained as a pricey tourist trap by the Preservation Society of Newport County, so naturally, at the end of the tour, you exit through the gift shop.

I have to admit, I’m a sucker for gift shops. Everything’s overpriced there, of course, so I’ve trained myself (mostly through aggressive electroshock treatments, but occasionally with experimental drug therapy) not to buy anything moronically expensive; instead I take pleasure in discovering what new, absurd item this particular gift shop has decided to emblazon with the logo of the particular attraction. Which is to say, somebody out there is buying the $40 museum ties and the $65 pewter replicas, but it ain’t me.

As I was practicing my restraint in The Breakers’ gift shop, the shelf of books caught my eye, in particular a book entitled Quotes for Writing, by Janet Alexander Pell. A few clever quotes were contained inside; one I quite liked was, “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair,” which was attributed to Mary Heaton Vorse.

Since I consider myself a writer, and am frequently looking for things that might help me apply one seat to the other, I considered making a purchase -- until I espied the price tag. For this little spiral-bound book, maybe a hundred pages total in length, with at least half of those filled with the white space between the quotes, Ms. Pell was asking for sixteen (16) American dollars.

Sixteen bucks! For somebody else’s quotes? I didn’t even know who Mary Heaton Vorse was -- hell, maybe this Pell chick just made her up, and made up the quote while she was at it.

Hastily, I put the book down. Next to it was another Pell tome -- Quotes for Coping. This one was going for twenty bills.

Frankly, I was outraged. Not because I was worried that Mary Heaton Vorse wasn’t getting her fair cut -- but because Janet Alexander Pell was turning a tidy profit on somebody else’s words, and I wasn’t.

Which got me to thinking that maybe I should put out a book of quotations. Of course, I have no discernible qualification for putting out a book of quotations, but I couldn’t find any evidence of Janet Alexander Pell’s qualifications, either, and based on my perusal of the Quotations section at my local Borders, pretty much all you have to do to publish a book of quotations is to gather up a bunch of quotes and put them in print.

Some people might look at the crowded quotation market -- among others, I found The Book of Positive Quotations, The Book of Poisonous Quotes, 1001 Smartest Things Ever Said, The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said, The Change-Your-Life Quote Book, The Lift-Your-Spirits Quote Book, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, The Harper Book of Quotations, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, The New International Dictionary of Quotations, The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Quotations, Webster’s Dictionary of Quotations, Reader’s Digest Quotable Quotes, and Random House Webster’s “Quotationary” -- and think the shelf was full. I look at those and figure there’s a quotation-book-buying sucker born every minute. Er, I mean, there’s got to be room for one more.

It seems the quotation books fall into two categories: the all-encompassing-dictionary-of-quotes type books, and the quotes-for-a-specific-audience type books. Since the all-encompassing type sounds like an awful lot of work, I’m thinking the specific-audience kind is the best bet.

As to which specific audience I would want to appeal, I have no idea. I have very little expertise in the world, except in random things.

Which, I suppose, is a random sort of expertise in itself.

So with that in mind, I bring you the first installment of The State of the Union Random Quote Book. I make no promises to help you lift your spirits or change your life, but at the same time, it’s free.

I’m thinking if this goes over well, maybe I’ll have enough credibility to extend this nonsense into a book -- and actually charge people for it. In the meantime, here are a few of my favorite random quotes, accumulated by me over the years:

God could not be everywhere, and therefore he created mothers. -- Jewish proverb

I don't want to sound spiritual, but I try to make an antenna out of myself, a lightning rod out of myself, so whatever is out there can come in. It happens in different places, in hotels, in the car -- when someone else is driving. I bang on things, slap the wall, break things -- whatever is in the room. There are all these things in the practical world that you deal with on a practical level, and you don't notice them as anything but what you need them to be. But when I'm writing, all these things turn into something else, and I see them differently -- almost like I've taken a narcotic. Somebody once said I’m not a musician but a tonal engineer. I like that. It’s kind of clinical and primitive at the same time. -- Tom Waits, musician, raconteur

I don't need time. What I need is a deadline. -- Duke Ellington, jazz pianist, composer, and conductor

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that. -- Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack), Say Anything

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. -- Scott Adams, Dilbert cartoonist

A man never gets to this station in life without being helped, aided, shoved, pushed and prodded to do better. I want to be honest with you: The players I played with and the coaches I had . . . they are directly responsible for my being here. I want you all to remember that. I always will. -- Johnny Unitas, quarterback, Pro Football Hall of Fame induction, 1979

The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten. -- Benjamin Franklin, kite flyer

By the way, everyone should work in a restaurant for at least six months. Aspiring writers always e-mail me for advice, and I never know what to tell them. Well, I'm telling you this: Work in a bar or a restaurant. Learn about people, get up at noon every day, go to bed at 4 a.m. every night, hang out with people who are just as confused and directionless as you are, drink and smoke as much as possible, throw wads of money around after shifts like you're a drug dealer, date somebody with no long-term potential, and live like that for six months. It will be the best thing you ever did. -- Bill Simmons, The Sports Guy, ESPN.com’s Page 2

Knowledge tells us that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom prevents us from putting it into fruit salad. -- Miles Kington, British journalist, jazz musician and broadcaster

Anyone can look for fashion in a boutique or history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store and fashion in an airport. -- Robert S. Wieder, journalist

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.” -- H.L. Mencken, newspaperman, book reviewer, political commentator

One man's delusion is another man's genius. They said Columbus was delusional too and he founded a city in Ohio. -- Mark O’Hara, Cubs fan

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned. -- Buddha, all-around good dude

Got some random, favorite quotes of your own? Send them to me here, and if they’re good, and I’m feeling charitable, maybe I’ll include them in a future installment.