»The best ideas are born on the tongue and only then proceeded to the mind.«

– Okänt ursprung, via David Sandström

Life's a game of inches

MP3-citat: Ladda hem

»You know when you get old in life things get taken from you. That's, that's part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losing stuff. You find out life's a game of inches, so is football. Because in either game – life or football – the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don't quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast and you don't quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They're in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that's gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying!«

– Tony D’Amato, Any Given Sunday (1999)

I'm going to be a writer.

»A conversation with My Mother:
Patience, Caution and Art.

›But do you really think you can be an artist in a country like this and still keep your pride? To be accepted by people, who understand nothing of art, to get these people to buy your work, you'd have to toady to the state, to the rich, and worst of all, to semiliterate journalists. Do you think you're up to this?‹

›I don't want to be an artist‹, I said. ›I'm going to be a writer.‹«

– ur Istanbul av Orhan Pamuk, via Bodil Malmsten

Erfarenhetsfibrer

»Våra kroppar består av ERFARENHETSFIBRER. Längden på fibrerna påverkar hur vi mår, går och står. (...) Människor med korta erfarenhetsfibrer (...) har haft många korta tillfälliga relationer och över huvud taget många korta intensiva erfarenheter. Fibrerna har en början, men sällan ett riktigt slut. De är oavslutade, öppna i ena änden. Människorna med den här typen av korta fibrer består alltså (..) av intensiva fragment, vilket gör dem rastlösa, sårbara, hetsiga.«

– Therapeutuc Pictionary, 27 januari 2006

»Talent borrows, genius steals«

– Oscar Wilde, via Lidbom

»The story is king«

– Dick Wolf, skapare av Law & Order, via Jan Gradvall

»Good writers borrow from other writers, great writers steal«

– Sam Seaborn i Vita huset, Säsong 4

Krönikebygge

»Jag vill alltid knyta ihop mina krönikor till tajta små paket, samtidigt som det inte får vara för svårt att öppna dem. (…) Det är så jag jobbar. Teser, exempel och associationer måste vikas in i varandra för att få liv.«

– Kjell Häglund i en krönika i Dagens Media, 22 oktober 2005

»There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot«

– Steven Wright, via M

The whatever device

Jeff Megall: Sony has a futuristic sci-fi movie they're looking to make.
Nick Naylor: Cigarettes in space?
Jeff Megall: It's the final frontier, Nick.
Nick Naylor: But wouldn't they blow up in an all oxygen environment?
Jeff Megall: Probably. But it's an easy fix. One line of dialogue. 'Thank God we invented the... ' you know, whatever device.

– Thank You for Smoking (2005)

Lättsamt och seriöst

»Själv får jag ett närmast fysiskt rus varje gång jag upptäcker en akademisk analys av just ›Seinfeld‹ eller något annat popkulturellt. Jag är uppvuxen med slagorden om att skriva lättsamt om det seriösa och seriöst om det lättsamma.«

– Martin Gelin på sin blogg, 27 sept 2005

»En dag vill jag öppna tidningen och bli förändrad«

– Bertil Torekull i en debattartikel i Aftonbladet, 18 sept 2005

Poetry

»Poetry is not a part of nature, not even the best or choicest part. Still less is it a reflection of nature, which would lead to a mockery of the law of identity; but it is something that, with astonishing independence, settles down in a new extraspecial field of action, not so much narrating nature as acting out by means of its instruments, which are commonly called images.«

– Okänt ursprung, via David Sandström