For anyone who grew up in the suburbs anywhere, a dream like this seems vaguely ludicrous and completely unattainable. But this moment is directly connected to those childhood imaginings, and for anybody who’s on the downside of advantage and relying purely on courage, it’s possible.

—Russell Crowe on receiving the Academy Award for Best Actor

I was killing myself in the most cowardly way imaginable… One day I just hit the wall, and I reached out my hand and I said, “I need help,” and help was there in so many forms. And these people taught me an entirely new way of living. I cannot tell you how much better it is.

—Stephen Gaghan, former drug addict and Oscar-winning screenwriter for Traffic

Any man who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.

—Samuel Goldwyn

What exactly is “viewer discretion”? If viewers had discretion, most TV shows would not be on the air.

 —George Carlin

 

I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on, I go into another room and read a good book.

 —Groucho Marx

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

—Groucho Marx

I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There’s a knob called brightness, but it doesn’t work.

—Eugene P. Gallagher

I’ve had more stitches than a sewing machine can produce in a year.

—Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin

Bite the wax tadpole.

  —“Coca-Cola,” as originally translated into Chinese

Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.

—“Pepsi Comes Alive” as originally translated into Chinese

Dying is an art, like everything else.

 —Sylvia Plath

 

It makes sense that the single greatest menace to humankind would eventually be the cow, that heretofore docile symbol of motherhood’s creamy goodness, of bucolic kitsch and prime cuts.  ...There are 5,000 or so cow-related items for sale on eBay. Old ladies like to start little cow collections. Salt-and-pepper shakers, kitchen clocks – that’s what mad cow disease used to be.

—Washington Post staff writer Hank Steuver

Only an auctioneer admires all schools of art.

—Oscar Wilde_

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

 —Henry Ward Beecher

The only important thing is to follow nature. A tiger should be a good tiger; a tree, a good tree. So a man should be a man. But to know what man is, one must follow nature and go alone, admitting the importance of the unexpected. Still nothing is possible without love… For love puts one in a mood to risk everything, and not to withhold important elements.

 —Carl Jung

Unremembered and afar / I watched you as I watched a star, / Through darkness struggling into view, / And loved you better than you knew.

   —American poet Elizabeth Akers Allen (1832-1911)

The Zen student, the poet, the husband, the wife – none knows with certainty what he or she is staying for, but all know the likelihood that they will be staying for “a while”: to find out that they are staying for. And it is the faith of all those disciplines that they will not stay to find out that they should not have stayed.

—Wendell Berry

 

The Eskimos are a gentle people. I like gentle people, because there are so many in the world who are not gentle. Sometimes in a big city I jusqt sit all day in my room, with my head down, afraid to go out and talk to tough people. I_expect Eskimos have spells like that too.

— Ernie Pyle

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

—James Branch Cabell

 

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

                                    —Eleanor Roosevelt

 

(Each week this column features quotations gleaned from the readings and experiences of our editors, reporters, readers, and friends. All are invited to submit quotations for inclusion here. They may be sent to Gleanings, c/o The Newtown Bee, 5 Church Hill Road, Newtown, CT 06470 or emailed to editor@thebee.com.)