"Troy: Welcome to the Knowledgeum, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such automated information kiosks as "Welcome to Springfield Airport" and "Where's Nordstrom?" While you're enjoying our Hall of Wonders, your car unfortunately will be subject to repeated break-ins and... [Fades]"

"Lionel: Oh no, we've drawn Judge Schneider."

"Troy: Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such other nature films as "Earwigs, Ew." and "Man Vs Nature... The Road To Victory"."

"Lionel: And as for your case, don't you worry. I've argued in front of every judge in the state. Often as a lawyer."

"Troy: Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such educational films as "Two Minus Three Equals Negative Fun" and "Firecrackers: The Silent Killer"."

"Troy: I'm actor Troy McClure. You might remember me from such TV series as "Buck Henderson, Union Buster" and "Troy and Company's Summertime Smile Factory". Today I'm here to tell you about "Spiffy.", the 21st century stain remover. Let's meet the inventor, Dr. Nick Riviera."

"Troy: Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such educational films as Lead Paint: Delicious but Deadly and Here Comes the Metric System!. Today I will be your narrator in this sex-ed film called Fuzzy Bunny's Guide to You-Know-What."

"Troy: Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such self help films as "Smoke Yourself Thin!" and "Get Confident, Stupid!"."

"Lionel: Well, I didn't win. Here's your pizza."

"Lionel: I've been getting a lot of calls about you, Marge. People just love your no-pressure approach."

"Lionel: Mrs. Simpson, don't you worry. I watched Matlock in a bar last night; the sound wasn't on, but I think I got the gist of it."

"Troy: Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such other medical films as "Mommy, What's On That Man's Face?" and "Alice Doesn't Live Anymore"."

"I am no longer in pictures for money. I am in them because I love them. I am not in vain. I do not care about giving a smashing personal performance. My one ambition is to create fine entertainment."

"The refined simplicity should develop out of the complex. [...] It would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talkie instead of the other way around."

"You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down."

"[Talking pictures are] like putting lip rouge on the Venus de Milo."

"Make them laugh, make them cry, and back to laughter. What do people go to the theater for? An emotional exercise. And no preachment."

"I was forced to live far beyond my years when just a child, now I have reversed the order and I intend to remain young indefinitely."

"Preemptive boringness. Being one-dimensional is the most satisfying method of coping with out-of-control people - with any situation that's out of control … Don't let people know the ideas you love, the games you've played, the places you've visited in your mind. Keep your treasure to yourself."

"'Is the hotel Marge? It has to be Marge. I want atmosphere.' Marge is Anna-Louise's word describing sad, 1950s-ish diner-type places where the waitresses are named Marge."

"Meeting Anna-Louise was like finding a stranger's shopping list on the mall floor and realising there are other, more interesting diets than your own. It was the first time I ever felt incomplete."

"Grandpa, like most of the fun-loving gang who built the Plants, just wanted to die or have his brain turn to oatmeal before it becomes too apparent exactly what a nightmare he and his buddies have saddled their descendants with."

"Consensus Terrorism: The process that decides in-office attitudes and behavior."

"Clique Maintenance: The need of one generation to see the generation following it as deficient so as to bolster its own collective ego: Kids today do nothing. They’re so apathetic. We used to go out and protest. All they do is shop and complain."

"I think about how I think I know a person then 'poof!' I discover I only knew a cartoon version. Suddenly there's this fleshy, demanding, noisy creature in front of me, unknowable and just as lost as I am, and equally unable to remember that every soul in the world is hurting, not just themselves."

"Boomer Envy: Envy of material wealth and long-range material security accrued by older members of the baby boom generation by virtue of fortunate births."

"Bleeding Ponytail: An elderly sold out baby boomer who pines for hippie or pre-sellout days."

"Emotional Ketchup Burst: The bottling up of opinions and emotions inside onself so that they explosively burst forth all at once, shocking and confusing employers and friends—most of whom thought things were fine."

"Veal-Fattening Pen: Small, cramped office workstations built of fabric-covered disassemblable wall partitions and inhabited by junior staff members. Named after the small preslaughter cubicles used by the cattle industry."

"Decade Blending: In clothing: the indiscriminate combination of two or more items from various decades to create a personal mood: Sheila = Mary Quant earrings (1960s) + cork wedgie platform shoes (1970s) + black leather jacket (1950s and 1980s)."

"Vaccinated Time Travel: To fantasize about traveling backward in time, but only with proper vaccinations."

"Brazilification: The widening gulf between the rich and the poor and the accompanying disappearance of the middle classes."

"In his (now deeply underrated) novel Generation X, Douglas Coupland sets the action against the background of a vast desert, mile after mile of emptiness, a hard stop, the ends of the earth. So hard, to feel trapped between having everything ahead of you and nowhere to go."

"Historical Slumming: The act of visiting locations such as diners, smokestack industrial sites, rural village—locations where time appears to have been frozen many years back—so as to experience relief when one returns back to “the present.”"

"Historical Overdosing: to live in a period of time when too much seems to happen. Major symptoms include addiction to newspapers, magazines, and TV news broadcasts."

"Most know Coupland as the coiner of “Generation X,” a place-holder of a generational handle that we GenX’ers were too apathetic/jaded to swap out, thus proving the moniker’s point. But the Canadian Coupland is much more than that – he’s an artist, a prolific novelist, and has been a keen observer of what is happening to us for a good three decades."

"Historical Underdosing: To living a period of time when nothing seems to happen. Major symptoms include addiction to newspapers, magazines, and TV news broadcasts."

"Poverty Jet Set: A group of people given to chronic travelling at the expense of long-term job stability or a permenant residence. Tend to have doomed and extremely expensive phone call relationships with people named Serge or Ilyana. Tend to discuss frequent flyer programs at parties."

"We have to count. I want to be part of history. I want a Wikipedia page. I want Google hits. I don’t want to be just a living organism that comes and goes and leaves no trace on this planet."

"McJob: A low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one."

"We live small lives on the periphery; we are marginalized and there's a great deal in which we choose not to participate. We wanted silence and we have that silence now. We arrived here speckled in sores and zits, our colons so tied in knots that we never thought we'd have a bowel movement again. Our systems had stopped working, jammed with the odor of copy machines, Wite-Out, the smell of bond paper, and the endless stress of pointless jobs done grudgingly to little applause. We had compulsions that made us confuse shopping with creativity, to take downers and assume that merely renting a video on a Saturday night was enough. But now that we live here in the desert, things are much, much better."

"Doug's Law: "You can have information or you can have a life, but you can't have both.""

"Unlike Rachel, Player One has a complete overview both of the world and of time. Player One’s life is more like a painting than it is a story. Player One can see everything with a glance and can change tenses at will. Player One has ultimate freedom, the ultimate software on the ultimate hardware. That realm is also the one place where Player One feels, for lack of a better word, normal."

"I don't want dainty little moments of insight …"

"Fake yuppie experiences that you had to spend money on, like white water rafting or elephant rides in Thailand don't count. I want to hear some small moment from your life that proves you're really alive."

"Being alive is just a brief technicality. (p. 167)"

"… after you're dead and buried and floating around whatever place we go to, what's going to be your best memory of Earth? … What moment for you defines what it's like to be alive on this planet?"

"All events became omens; I lost the ability to take anything literally."

"Finally, my life was a story. My days would no longer feel like a video game that resets to zero every time I wake up, and then begs for coins. (p. 143)"