People From New York State

"The members of a society do not make conscious choices in arriving at a particular way of life. Rather, they make unconscious adaptations. ...they know only that a particular choice works, even though it may appear bizarre to an outsider."

"If you read Peter Farb's book, Man's Rise of Civilization, he goes through all these different cultures at first contact, and they very often figure out in very different ways, but typically the things that were in common among them, were that the idea of the accumulation of private property beyond your needs was considered a mental illness."

"Pat Buchanan likes to say we're in a culture war. The Civil War was a culture war, and brothers killed brothers. I wonder if they avoided dinner conversation about politics. What if this culture war turned into a real war? I'd look back on that dinner and wish that I'd ordered a side of argument."

"Who likes the little little duckies in the pond? I do, I do, I do, a-chicka quack quack."

"Any individual entity that pretends to understand the rules that guide this space is under an illusion."

"Look what I found; a litter version of the Internet! This used to be something that could convert carbon dioxide to oxygen using only sunlight, water, and a few nutrients. But now it's way cooler; it has two functions. You can either put little words on it, or crumple it up into a tiny ball and throw it! ."

"Are the new viewers gone yet?"

"When I get sick I start scripting the video tape that I'm gonna leave behind when I die. Sometimes imagining that even makes me cry. Both hurting and happiness make me feel more alive, but as I get older it seems that hurting's the low hanging fruit. So I pick it. ."

"Generalized statements … which instill nebulous fear without specific information are exactly in line with the goals of terrorism. ."

"This little bathtub smells like ass.."

"Don't swim up stream, baby. The future was right where you were. ."

"Look! A see-through wall of glass!"

"in the summertime sometimes i sleep "macho": ah, white t-shirt, no underpants. Sleeping macho looks very attractive on a man. I feel like it helps me breathe."

"If you don't know what a cat is, it's sort of like a stuffed animal... but with a working asshole. I'll admit that when I went to the pound, I was actually shopping for a never ending box of shit, um, and the cat just came with it."

"...next time you rake up those leaves realize you're about to jump into a pile of tree shit. ."

"Say the opposite, say the opposite, say the same thing, say the same thing. (song/refrain on "The Show")."

"(On airplane etiquette) Although reclining your seat is technically your right, just like free speech if you exercise it to your limits everyone around you will think you're an asshole."

"A wedge strategy is where you focus on a highly charged issue at the borders of rationality and emotion. The emotional content of the issue can create a moral conviction that the issue needs to be resolved at any cost. Tactics that would otherwise be called into question can then be employed to resolve the issue. This sets precedent for the future use of those tactics in other arenas."

"It's complimacated. (sounds like compli-ma-kayted, emphasis on first syllable)"

"The president said some words, like nouns and verbs."

"'Army of one': when the shit hits the fan, you're on your own.."

"Shock 'n' Awe. We bring the BoomWow."

"Water boarding: Is that like snowboarding?! ."

"Okay, roll-call, no talking. Benny, Marc; Ethel, Shakina, nice shoes. Bobo twins, anyone seen the Bobo twins? Those Bobo twins."

"I'm not sure, but I think I might be an adult.... Someone the other day told me I should act more like one, but I don't even know what it is. What's an adult? I blame it on my parents; they caught it before I was even born. When I break things now I have to pay for them. I rarely get cake at parties anymore. When people give me sheets of paper I'm not supposed to draw on 'em. I'm just supposed to put the letters of my name on a line. Where's the fun in that? People get funny when I say the obvious, like "you've got a big nose." All of a sudden I'm supposed to know about the weather. And have plans! I even checked on the internet and no one's working on a cure. I'm not sure I like it."

"Both hurting and happiness make me feel more alive, but as I get older it seems that hurting's the low hanging fruit. So I pick it."

"The word vagina is a beautiful word, like all words that have v's and g's in them, like gavel, or evangelical. I love vaginas, and evangelicals. I fucking hate gavels though."

"I don't think you understand what the word cool means.... Being cool is about not participating in traditionally enjoyable experiences and creating the illusion that happiness can be found in alternative, less enjoyable experiences. The degree to which other people around you try to emulate your alternative lifestyle and fail determines how cool you are. You're only as cool as people wish they were."

"A surprise party is where your friends and family lie to you to make you feel alone and unloved. Then, when they throw you the party they would have thrown, regardless, you experience a sudden rush of emotion as your depressed self returns back to normal. Some people think that life in general's like that. They keep waiting for the party. I call that: denial."

"[T]errorists are desperate assholes who see no institutionalized recourse to address their grievances, so they resort to random acts of violence in order to instill fear into the general population."

"Trying to defeat an ideology by killing individuals is like trying to save a marriage with a blowjob. It might buy you some time, but in the end it'll just suck. ."

"[T]here's more than one way to skin a cat. But from the cat's perspective, they all suck. ."

"Just a reminder, what other people think of you is none of your business.."

"This is Ze Frank, thinking so you don't have to. (Standard sign-off for "The Show"; varies at times)."

"Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's makeup and success — along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like... I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value."

"People do what you inspect, not what you expect."

"I remember two playwrights who affected me deeply, for their wit especially: Edward Albee and Samuel Beckett. I found their sense of absurdity comforting."

"It is three and a half hours long, four characters wide and a cesspool deep."

"The gods too are fond of a joke."

"The only time I'll get good reviews is if I kill myself."

"Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve."

"Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage."

"I created myself, and I'll attack anybody I feel like."

"If Attila the Hun were alive today, he'd be a drama critic."

"I survive almost any onslaught with a shrug, which must appear as arrogance, but really isn't because I'm not an arrogant person. When you write a play, you make a set of assumptions — that you have something to say, that you know how to say it, that it's worth saying, and that maybe someone will come along for the ride. That's all. And then you go about your business, assuming you'd be the first to know if your talent has collapsed. I don't think I've been a commercial playwright ever. By some curious mischance, a couple of my plays managed to hit an area where commercial success was feasible. But it's wrong to think I'm a commercial playwright who has somehow ceased his proper function. I have always been the same thing — which is not a commercial playwright. I'm not after the brass ring. I very seldom get it anyway, and then it's accidental when I do. … So I write those things that interest me."

"I have been both overpraised and underpraised. I assume by the time I finish writing — and I plan to go on writing until I'm 90 or gaga — it will all equal itself out... You can't involve yourself with the vicissitudes of fashion or critical response. I'm fairly confident that my work is going to be around for a while. I am pleased and reassured by the fact that a lot of younger playwrights seem to pay me some attention and gain some nourishment from what I do."

"I've noticed that there is not necessarily a great relationship between what the majority of critics have to say and what is actually true. Some of them are so busy trying to mold the public taste according to the limits of their perceptions, and others are so busy reflecting what they consider to be the public taste — that view limited again by their perception. You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid — but most people don't take the trouble."

"Q: Do you find quite a difference between the audience at large and the critics as a group? A: Well, one is a group of human beings, one is not."

"American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties."

"Primarily the characters must seem interested in what they, themselves, are doing and saying. While the lines must not read metronome-exact, I feel that a certain set rhythm will come about, quite of itself. No one rushes in on the end of anyone else's speech; no one waits too long. I have indicated, quite precisely, within the speeches of the Long-Winded Lady, by means of commas, periods, semi-colons, colons, dashes and dots (as well as parenthetical stage directions) the speech rhythms. Please observe them carefully, for they were not thrown in, like herbs on a salad, to be mixed about. I have underlined words I want stressed. I have capitalized for loudness, and used exclamation points for emphasis. There are one or two seeming questions that I have left the question mark off of. This was done o purpose, as an out-loud reading will make self-evident."