John Barnes Quotes

Future Farmers of America. Group who take ag classes and are going to inherit the farm. Hot shit around here, they have a couple guys in every clique, and they stick together, 'cause they know they'll be seeing each other every week for the next sixty years.

In the light of the crappy little lamp, all I was looking at was a frizzy mop of blonde hair and a bare back with one big angry red patch on it, but Jesus fucking God she was beautiful, and if you don't understand that, I'm sorry for you.

There's a rule or something that if a girl can crack you up, you have to do what she says.

Where did you find construction guys swapping dirty jokes in proto-Númenorean?" Aura asked.

"On construction sites. Is that coffee ready?

I looked at the people playing, walking, loafing, hurrying, or sauntering across the little park in front of us. How many terrible stories were there, just there in front of me, never to be spoken?

They only trusted the wisdom of people brighter and more worldly than themselves when it was expressed in the vocabulary and style of rural idiots. In his guise as Brazenydol, he had once had a contract with DARPA to teach a team of physicists the basic terminology of tractor pulls so that they could give an acceptable explanation of omniwavelength stealth to a Congressional committee that didn't understand tractor pulls, either.

Amatus waited a long time, but at last he broke the silence.
"There is much I don't understand."
"That will never change," Mortis said decisively. "Except that what you don't understand will change.

By noon everyone had heard that I had spent the night with Marti in a hotel room and when the cops came by, with our mothers, I had asked for time to get dressed. It was also all over the school that I had deliberately provoked Gratz and lived to tell of it, and that Paul had knocked me flat. And on top of that, Spooky Darla had given me a thermonuclear kiss in public.
No getting away from it: I was now Public Madman Number One.

A song is not a tool for changing a human heart in the way that a wrench is a tool for changing a bolt, but it was the tool I had, and I was the tool the OSP had.
The cansos in "Songs from Underneath" were not really as subtle as a wrench. Their primary trope was the ancient trick of making the viewpoint character a victim of oppression, because people identify passionately with a strong viewpoint character, and there is intense pleasure in identifying with the narrator of a sad story or song. In "Black Beauty" that trick had made people begin to think that beating horses was bad; it was the trope that make privileged white children burn with outrage at "Native Son" and prudes weep over prostitutes in "Elle frequentait la rue Pigalle" and "My Name is Not Bitch." They also received, at no extra cost, the delicious smug superiority of sympathizing with an underdog, unlike their less-enlightened neighbors.
Their primary

This is not the way these tales end," Calliope said firmly.
"This is not the way that things end when they get to be tales," Amatus said, "but since ours is not yet told, we cannot count on it. There were a hundred dead princes on the thorns outside Sleeping Beauty's castle, and I'm sure many of them were splendid fellows.

So we fell asleep holding hands. If married couples got to do this all the time, shit if I could understand how there were ever divorces, or even fights.

Useless people are not improved by giving them the impression they are useful.

Marti wasn't the type to give up without a fight, especially not if she was very afraid - some people are like that. They lean into the fear.

I guess when life hands you lemons, chop 'em up and get lemonade; when life hands you cats, chop 'em up and get pussy.

If you look at the last decade of global temperature, it's not increasing,

Slow down, and enjoy that stuff if it's possible. Kathy doesn't care what time I leave, only what time I clock out, and she knows sometimes I sleep here when I'm locked out, or have friends over. Everything's cool as long as I clock out on time."
She swallowed that big bite she'd rammed in, and said, "Okay. Jeez, I'm so hungry, this stuff is good."
Ketchup for your fries, miss? I can recommend it - it's my main source of vitamin C."
She smiled. "Sure. What does Kathy do if you clock out late?"
Well, a couple times I've fallen asleep and done it, and gotten off with a warning. Eventually, though, if I made a habit of it, I'd disappear in the middle of the night, and never be seen again, and the only clues the police would have would be a few orange hairs and some enormous shoe prints. But for a few weeks afterward, all over the country, the Quarter Pounders would taste just a little bit more like Lightsburg, Ohio.

If Glenn Hoddle had been any other nationality, he would have had 70 or 80 caps for England.

Romney sounds like he wants to be the nice uncle in a sitcom, Santorum sounds like he wants to be a twelfth-century archbishop, Gingrich sounds like he wants to go to outer space, and Paul sounds like he came from there.

I would like to lose some of the weight that I have put on since I stopped playing football.

Going into the Republican Party National Convention, in all objective truth, our non‑winning front‑runners are the sorriest collection of stuffed shirts, empty suits, self‑gratulatory ignorami, and outright wig‑flipped ding‑dongs in the history of the Republic.

You know, when someone hurts my feelings, somehow it does not comfort me to know that it was deliberate ... On the other hand, knowing that someone else thinks they are assholes helps a great deal."
"I think that's some kind of rule for the universe.

Of course you would, Mitt," Reagan said. "Well, I'm glad we understand each other, and I think your father would be proud of you being in his old spot, and I want you to know that when I'm choosing my Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, your resumé will be on the very top of the pile. It's been great chatting with you but you know, I have to find a vice presidential candidate, and soon."

"Ha, ha, ha, ah it's been great chatting with you, too, Mr. President, and - "

Reagan cocked his head slightly, smiled, and caught the eye of a minion; a moment later Romney had been deposited outside the door like a discarded room service tray, having barely had time to shift from ha, ha, ha back to ah…ah…

People who put principles before people are people who hate people. They don't much care about how well it works, just about how right it is ... they may even like it better if it inflicts enough pain.

I wondered if they got to enjoy being normal, to know just how terrific it was, or whether it was just invisible to them like air?

Ah. Well, it stands for Freedom From Morality. We don't think healthy amorality happens naturally."
"But you're not amoral," I pointed out. I would trust you to keep your word any time. You don't steal. I've never known you to harm anyone except enemy soldiers in time of war."
He laughed. "I didn't say 'immoral', I said amoral. You really didn't read your guidebook. A person who has a compulsive need to break moral commandments is as much a prisoner as the person who feels bound to obey them. And the human brain is hardwired to produce moral commandments. That is why we think you have to train young people to keep them from developing morality and blocking their pursuit of pleasure. I teach it because --"
"It gives you an outlet for your sadistic urge to confuse children.

I think everyone always has time to suffer.

I gave up drinking, and the next time I saw Bonny at a party, she was mad at me about that too, and went off and made out all night with Chip Neminech, the tackle who demonstrated that not only is there no I in team, there's no Q, either. I suppose, given that my mother was a girl, I shouldn't have been surprised that some of them could get pretty weird.

I've got ten thousand ducks quacking and waddling, with one deluded chicken that thinks it's a duck in the middle. I think it's a flock of ducks; Cam thinks it's a malign conspiracy of chickens.

Supposedly nobody outside the group knew there was a group. Of course we all knew that wasn't true. High school was like the little clear plastic tunnels that Paul's hamsters lived in: you could run a long way but never get out, and always, everyone could see you.