"An American missionary named Horace Wilson introduced baseball to Japan in 1872. Influential daimyo (feudal lords) decided that baseball was an American martial art and urged young Japanese boys to develop the American spirit by playing it. The spirit of kendo prevailed, though, with Japanese players attacking baseball like stoic gentlemen warriors, practicing year-round through driving rain and bitter cold, prizing the man who fielded ground balls until his hands bled and treating umpires with exaggerated obeisance no matter how dreadful their decisions. The game quickly became very popular in Japan."
Nicholas Dawidoff, The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg
"I was young and foolish then...
I'm old and foolish now."
They Might Be Giants
"I went out and bought a new outfit, and my husband told me, 'I don't like that one bit,' but I told him, 'I bought it, I'm going to wear it, and I'm going out. You can come too if you want, but if not, I'll see you later.'"
one of the "fat and sassy" women at work
"The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely."
Lorraine Hansberry
"[My boyfriend's sister] is growing up to be a prep. I told her, don't be a prep, because you'll regret it. Be weird. People still come up to me today and tell me they remember me because of how I was in high school. I say, be weird and don't be shy about it, and don't let anybody else tell you what to do, because in the end you were who you wanted to be and who other people wanted to be like."
Susan P.
"And tonight I can understand a man wanting to die because nothing matters anymore when one sees through life completely."
-
"Yes, everything is simple. It's men who complicate things. Don't let them tell us any stories. Don't let them say about the man condemned to death: 'He is going to pay his debt to society,' but: 'They're going to chop his head off.' It may seem like nothing. But it does make a little difference. There are some people who prefer to look their destiny in the eye."
Albert Camus, "Between Yes and No"
(translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy)
"I am terrified... of the eternal silence of these infinite spaces."
Pascal
(stolen from Steve's plan file)
"HARANGUE, n.
A speech by an opponent, who is known as an harrangue-outang."
Ambrose Bierce
Choate: That guy needs a general beating.
Eve: He probably gives himself one every night.
From "The Woman Who Told The Truth" :
"...And after a while her friends began to thin out in patches. Her passion for the truth was not compatible with a large visiting-list. For instance, she told Miriam Klopstock exactly how she looked at the Ilexes' ball. Certainly Miriam had asked for her candid opinion, but the Woman prayed in church every Sunday for peace in our time, and it was not consistent."
H. H. Munro (Saki)
"The bookcases in the various houses he lived in were always crammed full, and the bedrooms and hallways were turned into narrow passes between steep cliffs of books and mountains of errant documents that proliferated as he passed and pursued him without mercy in their quest for archival peace."
Gabriel García Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth
"There's something I haven't heard in a long time."
Eve's mommy on the subject of Eve's laugh
"My misfortune is that my heart cannot be happy, even for an hour, without love."
Catherine the Great