Neat Christmas Card Quotes

Confession: When I went to see The Empire Strikes Back I found myself glancing at my watch. The Force is with us, indeed, and a lot of it is hot air. It's a measure of my mixed feelings about The Empire Strikes Back that I'm not at all sure that I understand the plot. The Empire Strikes Back is about as personal as a Christmas card from a bank. ~ Vincent Canby

That's right, I am the unenthusiastic girl people avoid making eye contact with when they buy their spank mags and twelve-inch rubber cocks. I'm the one in full HAZMAT gear cleaning up the "accidental" shot spots they leave behind in one of our twenty-five cent porn booths. For what it's worth, there's a reason I don't fill in the glory holes, they all think they're so sneaky, getting their dick sucked by some anonymous stranger on the other side. I see it as less clean up, let the cock sucking stranger slurp up their spunk. It saves me running a disinfectant wipe along the wall, hoping that none of it touches any part of me. So keep up the good work anonymous strangers, keep gobbling cock and making my life easier. If you want, leave your address at the store and I'll add you to my fucking Christmas card list. ~ Jaden Wilkes

I had never before been a special fan of that great comedian Phyllis Diller, but she utterly won my heart this week by sending me an envelope that, when opened, contained a torn-off square of brown-bag paper of the kind suitable for latrine duty in an ill-run correctional facility. Duly unfurled, it carried a handwritten salutation reading as follows:
Money's scarce
Times are hard
Here's your f******
Xmas card
I could not possibly improve on the sentiment, but I don't think it ought to depend on the current austerities. Isn't Christmas a moral and aesthetic nightmare whether or not the days are prosperous? ~ Christopher Hitchens

More and more people each year are going abroad for Christmas ... Fed up with the fact that commercial Christmas starts in October. Fed up with carols. Dreading the arrival of Christmas cards from people they have forgotten to send a card to. Unable to bear yet another family get-together with Auntie Mary puking up in the corner after sampling too much of the punch. You see in the airports the triumphant glitter in the eyes of people who are leaving it all behind, including the hundredth rerun of Miracle on 34th Street. ~ M.C. Beaton

But Tammy Faye calls me, and Ron Jeremy calls me, Erik Estrada sends me a Christmas card every year. ~ Trishelle Cannatella

She's trying to sabotage all the magic holding this island together. But that would create a catastrophe for all of Hawaii."
"Well, that does it," Koko huffed. "As of today, she's off my Christmas card list. ~ Laurence Yep

Truth, justice and the American way. The American way is: truth and justice maybe say hello in the hallway, send each other a Christmas card, but that's about the extent of their relationship. ~ Don Winslow

Christmas cards ... are technically only junk mail from people you know. ~ Patricia Marx

Don't send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals, when their cheery effect is needed. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

There are all kinds of ways and reasons that mothers can and should be praised. But for cultivating a sense of invisibility, martyrdom and tirelessly working unnoticed and unsung? Those are not reasons. Praising women for standing in the shadows? Wrong. Where is the greeting card that praises the kinds of mothers I know? Or better yet, the kind of mother I was raised by? I need a card that says: "Happy Mother's Day to the mom who taught me to be strong, to be powerful, to be independent, to be competitive, to be fiercely myself and fight for what I want." Or "Happy Birthday to a mother who taught me to argue when necessary, to raise my voice for my beliefs, to not back down when I know I am right." Or "Mom, thanks for teaching me to kick ass and take names at work. Get well soon." Or simply "Thank you, Mom, for teaching me how to make money and feel good about doing it. Merry Christmas. ~ Shonda Rhimes

There's the house where that little red-haired girl lives ... Maybe she'll see me, and come rushing out to thank me for the Christmas card I sent her ... Maybe she'll even give me a hug ... Maybe Billie Jean King will call me tonight, and invite me out to dinner. ~ Charles M. Schulz

His hand was a claw, sharp enough to open her. She would be like all the others - Ruta Badowski, in her broken dancing shoes. Tommy Duffy, still with the dirt of his last baseball game under his nails. Gabriel Johnson, taken on the best day of his life. Or even Mary White, holding out for a future that never arrived. She'd be like all those beautiful, shining boys marching off to war, rifles at their hips and promises on their lips to their best girls that they'd be home in time for Christmas, the excitement of the game showing in their bright faces. They'd come home men, heroes with adventures to tell about, how they'd walloped the enemy and put the world right side up again, funneled it into neat lines of yes and no. Black and white. Right and wrong. Here and there. Us and them. Instead, they had died tangled in barbed wire in Flanders, hollowed by influenza along the Western Front, blown apart in no-man's-land, writhing in trenches with those smiles still in place, courtesy of the phosgene, chlorine, or mustard gas. Some had come home shell-shocked and blinking, hands shaking, mumbling to themselves, following orders in some private war still taking place in their minds. Or, like James, they'd simply vanished, relegated to history books no one bothered to read, medals put in cupboards kept closed. Just a bunch of chess pieces moved about by unseen hands in a universe bored with itself. ~ Libba Bray

I had a terrible fight with my wife on New Year's Eve. She called me a procrastinator. So I finished addressing the Christmas cards and left. ~ Robert Orben

But the Promise showed their wildest dreams had simply not been wild enough. ~ Michael Card

Hogsmeade looked like a Christmas card; the little thatched cottages and shops were all covered in a layer of crisp snow; there were holly wreaths on the doors and strings of enchanted candles hanging in the trees. ~ J.K. Rowling

Corazon smiled at him. "You know how your mother keeps her Christmas card list? How she sends to people who send her one, and that list gets longer and longer every year?
- "Yeah," Jack muttered. "I have to lick the damn stamps."
-Watch your mouth," Cora reprimanded. "See love's like that. Once you give it, even by accident, you're on that list forever. ~ Jodi Picoult

I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease. Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has already been hit. From which it followed, of course, that one would never ever
on pain of deletion from dozens of Christmas card lists across the country
vote Republican. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

In the Christmas term a conjurer used to give a performance in the school Concert Hall. I remember how once he was disconcerted, during a card trick, by young Smart-Allick. The conjurer, stepping down amongst the audience, produced a card from Smart-Allick's pocket. My chum retaliated by producing a card from behind the conjurer's collar. The conjurer then took half a crown from my chum's ear, and my chum took a ten-bob note from the conjurer's wallet, three shillings from his trousers pocket, and a fountain-pen from his waistcoat. The headmaster interfered, and took a pound note from his son's coat pocket. The son at once got his father's watch. In a touching speech, the conjurer complained that he was four pounds down, and had lost his overcoat, a dozen stamps, his hat and his set of trick-cards. ~ J.B. Morton

I know. If I want to make you happy, it won't be through gifts like these. Rather than the rose raised in the greenhouse, you prefer the primrose found by the roadside. For Christmas, a heartfelt card. But I can't help wanting to give you all sorts of things. Because I want to see you looking happy every day. ~ Mizue Tani

It's surprising to me how many of my friends send Christmas cards, or holiday cards, including my atheist and secular friends. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Playing Sheldon is just heaven for me. I realize how enormously lucky I am to play a role that makes me so incredibly happy. As I told Chuck Lorre in a Christmas card a few years ago, I'm living a version of the dream. ~ Jim Parsons

Muslim Girlhood

I never found myself in a pink aisle.
There was no box for me
with glossy cellophane like heat
and a neat packet of instructions in six languages.

Evenings, I watched TV like a religion I moderately believed.
I watched to see how the others lived, not knowing I was the other - no laugh track in my living room, no tidy and punctual resolution waiting.

I took tests in which Jane & William had so many apples.

I fasted through birthday parties
and Christmas parties
and ate leftover tajine at plastic lunch tables,
picked at pepperoni from slices like blemishes and tried not to complain.

I prayed at the wrong times in the wrong tongue.
I hungered for Jell-O & Starburts & margarine;
could read mono- and diglycerides by five,
knew what gelatin meant, and
where it came from. ~ Leila Chatti

After sending Bella a Christmas card for years with no response, a few years before I'd decided to add something more personal- one of Mum's recipes. I had included various Christmas recipes each year since, from gingerbread to chocolate and cranberry brownies- Bella's favorite as a child. I saw these as a reminder of the good times we'd shared and hoped she'd feel the same. Just writing down those recipes reminded me of Mum in her kitchen- the soft, wobbly fold of flour into butter, the grit of sugar, the heady fragrance of chocolate, sweet vanilla and the warmth of ginger. ~ Sue Watson

From the baking aisle to the post office line to the wrapping paper bin in the attic, women populate every dark corner of Christmas. Who got up at 4 a.m. to put the ham in the oven? A woman ... Who sent the Christmas card describing her eighteen-year-old son's incarceration as 'a short break before college?' A woman. Who remembered to include batteries at the bottom of each stocking? A woman. And who gets credit for pulling it all off?
Santa.
That's right. A man. ~ Rachel Held Evans

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white. ~ Irving Berlin

There is a public me and a private me, who, if they were separate people, probably wouldn't exchange Christmas cards. ~ Robert Breault

I am a neat hand at cookery, and I'll tell you what I knocked up for my Christmas-eve dinner in the Library Cart. I knocked up a beefsteak-pudding for one, with two kidneys, a dozen oysters, and a couple of mushrooms thrown in. It's a pudding to put a man in good humour with everything, except the two bottom buttons of his waistcoat. ~ Charles Dickens

Karl and Marthe held the embossed card gingerly. It was Hitler's 1941 Christmas card, a photo of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, an ancient Greek statue the Wehrmacht had taken from the Louvre. His greeting was printed: Our Winged Victory. Beneath that was a scrawl with only the A and H legible. "He . . . touched this," Marthe said. Her hands shook, nearly dropping the card. ~ Gregory Benford

The dinner was a huge production, with kids stashed in the den to eat off card tables like a collection of understudies who dreamed of one day breaking into the dining room. ~ Ann Patchett

If something was worth writing down, it was worth writing down in full. And she had a horror of lists
grocery lists, Christmas card lists, and most grisly of all, to-do lists. Lists, like appointment books, were nails driven into the future. She knew this was an odd objection to be raised by a person whose daily life was utterly predictable, who never threw caution, or anything else, to the winds, who never packed light, because she never packed at all. Still, the future was a sleeping monster, not to be poked. ~ Jincy Willett

A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortunately, life itself often subscribes to this mode of storytelling, wearing us out with repetition, misleading emphases and inconsequential plot lines. It insists on showing us Bardak Electronics, the saftey handle in the car, a stray dog, a Christmas card and a fly that lands first on the rim and then in the centre of the ashtray.
Which explains how the curious phenomenon whereby valuable elements may be easier to experience in art and in anticipation than in reality. The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting wooliness of the present. ~ Alain De Botton

After I returned from that morning, our telephone rang incessantly with requests for interviews and photos. By midafternoon I was exhausted. At four o'clock I was reaching to disconnect the telephone when I answered one last call.
Thank heavens I did! I heard, "Mrs. Robertson? This is Ian Hamilton from the Lord Chamberlain's office."
I held my breath and prayed, "Please let this be the palace."
He continued: "We would like to invite you, your husband, and your son to attend the funeral of the Princess of Wales on Saturday in London." I was speechless. I could feel my heart thumping. I never thought to ask him how our name had been selected. Later, in London, I learned that the Spencer family had given instructions to review Diana's personal records, including her Christmas-card list, with the help of her closest aides.
"Yes, of course, we absolutely want to attend," I answered without hesitating. "Thank you so much. I can't tell you how much this means to me. I'll have to make travel plans on very short notice, so may I call you back to confirm? How late can I reach you?"
He replied, "Anytime. We're working twenty-four hours a day. But I need your reply within an hour." I jotted down his telephone and fax numbers and set about making travel arrangements.
My husband had just walked in the door, so we were able to discuss who would travel and how. Both children's passports had expired and could not be renewed in less than a day from the suburbs wh ~ Mary Robertson

Since I was Shy's old lady and my behaviour reflected on him, I backed down. But, since I was Tabby and he was Hound, I didn't do it gracefully.
"You're off my Christmas card list," I announced. ~ Kristen Ashley

Honey, have you seen my measuring tape?"
"I think it's in that drawer in the kitchen with the scissors, matches, bobby pins, Scotch tape, nail clippers, barbecue tongs, garlic press, extra buttons, old birthday cards, soy sauce packets thick rubber bands, stack of Christmas napkins, stained take-out menus, old cell-phone chargers, instruction booklet for the VCR, some assorted nickels, an incomplete deck of cards, extra chain links for a watch, a half-finished pack of cough drops, a Scrabble piece I found while vacuuming, dead batteries we aren't fully sure are dead yet, a couple screws in a tiny plastic bag left over from the bookshelf, that lock with the forgotten combination, a square of carefully folded aluminum foil, and expired pack of gum, a key to our old house, a toaster warranty card, phone numbers for unknown people, used birthday candles, novelty bottle openers, a barbecue lighter, and that one tiny little spoon."
"Thanks, honey."
AWESOME! ~ Neil Pasricha

At the age of 12, my parents gave me a chemistry set for Christmas, and experimentation soon became a consuming passion in my life. ~ John Vane

It's technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism you wouldn't be allowed to have a debate on a woman's place in society. You'd be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor
biting down on a wooden spoon, so as not to disturb the men's card game
before going back to hoeing the rutabaga field. ~ Caitlin Moran

And flowering all the year round, especially at Christmas - make your picture complete,' said he. 'No, ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

You ever seen A Christmas Story? You know toward the end when Ralphie beats the ever-loving shit out of the bully? I hope to God you've seen it. Because then you'll know exactly what I mean when I say I'm about to go real fucking Ralphie on this son of a bitch. ~ Emma Chase

Our job is not to 'go with our gut' or fixate on the first impression we form about an issue. No, we need to be strong enough to resist thinking that is too neat, too plausible, and therefore almost always wrong. ~ Ryan Holiday

Alai suddenly kissed Ender on the cheek and whispered in his ear, "Salaam." Then, red-faced, he turned away and walked to his own bed at the back of the barracks. Ender guessed that the kiss and the word were somehow forbidden. A suppressed religion, perhaps. Or maybe the word had some private and powerful meaning for Alai alone. ~ Orson Scott Card

One day she told me that they'd decided that my gender was divvied into two neat piles-Men and Guys. Basically, all the saints of the world: Men. The jerks, the players, the wet T-shirt contest aficionados? They were Guys. ~ Gayle Forman

I felt great calmness and perfect peace. I had the feelings of a poor man who has just come under the protection of the Royal Family, and has obtained an annual pension for life-the dreadful fear of poverty and want having left his house for ever; I felt the safety and shelter which the little chickens feel under the wings of the hen. This is what it is to abide under the shadow of the Almighty, and to hide under His wings until all dangers are past. ~ Christmas Evans

He's not a killer. He just wins ... Thoroughly ~ Orson Scott Card

When the tea is brought at five o'clock
And all the neat curtains are drawn with care,
The little black cat with bright green eyes
Is suddenly purring there. ~ Harold Monro

The Norfolk people are quick and smart in their motions and their speaking. Very neat and trim in all their farming concerns and very skilful. Their land is good, their roads are level, and the bottom of their soil is dry, to be sure; and these are great advantages; but they are diligent and make the most of everything. ~ William Cobbett

I have graded my separate works from A to D. The grades I hand out to myself do not place me in literary history. I am comparing myself with myself. Thus can I give myself an A-plus for Cat's Cradle, while knowing that there was a writer named William Shakespeare. The report card is chronological, so you can plot my rise and fall on graph paper, if you like:
Player Piano B
The Sirens of Titan A
Mother Night A
Cat's Cradle A-plus
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater A
Slaughterhouse-Five A-plus
Welcome to the Monkey House B-minus
Happy Birthday, Wanda June D
Breakfast of Champions C
Wampeters, Foma & Grandfalloons C
Slapstick D
Jailbird A
Palm Sunday C ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I wished I could take every course in the curriculum and read every book in the library. Sometimes after I finished a particularly good book, I had the urge to get the library card, find out who else read the book, and track them down to talk about it. ~ Susan Crandall