Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. —Ernest Hemingway, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” 1936
They are a curious mixture of Spanish tradition, American imitation and insular limitation. —Helen Lawrenson, “Latins Are Lousy Lovers,” 1936
Bust, bosom, boobs, babaloos, beanbags, buds, bulbs, balcony, balloons, bangers, bazongas, bazooms, baseballs, beach balls, berthas, bettys, beausom, beauts, begonias, big brown eyes, bits, blubbers, bobbers, BB’s, bonbons, boom-booms, bongos, bings, bounty, the Bobsy twins, bottles, boulders, bikini filler, brassiere food, breastices, bosiasm, bubbles, bubbies, buddies, bozos, bee stings, bullets, bumps, buffers, bumpers, busters, best friends, bug bites, butter-bags, the baby bar—that’s fifty just in the b’s, and we probably missed one or two. —Larry Doyle, Esky, 1999
And too much testosterone is what causes men to commit unspeakable crimes like murder and rape and The Rock and Bad Boys. —Jeanne Marie Laskas, “Michael Bay,” 2001
It is, for men, at some terrible level the closest thing to what childbirth is for women: the initiation into the power of life and death. —William Broyles Jr., “Why Men Love War,” 1984
Pants-pressers of the world unite! you have nothing to loose but your pants. —e. e. cummings, “Exit the Boob,” 1935
A child is a territory, a landscape, a region, an outpost, a republic and island of worry. —Alec Wilkinson, “Sam and Other Reflections on Being a Father,” 2000
In adolescence, I had only to say “God,” and I would think of my groin. —Norman Mailer, “A Piece of Harlot’s Ghost,” 1988
Cancer walked all over my father, in large part because he opened the door, turned on the porch light, and invited it in heartily—You old bastard! Come in and have a vodka tonic! —Dave Eggers, “Long Live the Career Smoker,” 1998
I am the happiest man in the world and here’s why: I walk down a street and I see a woman, not tall but well-proportioned, very dark-haired, very neat in her dress, wearing a dark skirt with deep pleats that swing with the rhythm of her rather quick steps; her stockings, of dark color, are carefully, impeccably smooth; her face is not smiling, this woman walks down the street without trying to please, as if she were unconscious of what she represented: a good carnal image of woman, a physical image, more than a sexy image, a sexual image. —Francois Truffaut, “Is Truffaut the Happiest Man on Earth? Yes,” 1970
Also, I shouldn’t have to say this, but do not, under any circumstances, put Pop Rocks in your ass. —Stacey Grenrock Woods, Sex column, 2003
We decided to spend a few minutes analyzing our motives—something we often do when there’s nothing good on television. —Calvin Trillin, “A Day at the Spaces,” 1977
For all her chic thinness, she had an almost breakfast-cereal air of health, a soap-and-lemon cleanness, a rough pink darkening of the cheeks. —Truman Capote, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” 1958
She is cute as a button, pretty as a picture, eminently fuckable, totally unavailable. —Mike Sager, “Beautiful,” 1999
But at three o’clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work—and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Pasting It Together,” 1936
He is lousy at alone. —Bill Zehme, “The Man Who Loved Women,” 1998
“Jewey Jew a piece of Jew on my Jew?” he says to Tracey. —Jon Stewart, “Jon,” 2001
