People From Minnesota

"Oil-for-food shows the need for reform. There was fraud, corruption, mismanagement. I come as an advocate of a strong United Nations. If you believe in reform, it’s going to be very hard if the guy leading the charge is stained."

"JavaScript is built on some very good ideas and a few very bad ones. The very good ideas include functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation. The bad ideas include a programming model based on global variables."

"The good thing about reinventing the wheel is that you can get a round one."

"Progress comes from finding better ways to do things. Don’t be afraid of innovation. Don’t be afraid of ideas that are not your own."

"You have punched this person in the face."

"Within the context of life, I am the centrist pragmatist who doesn't even vote; within the context of sports, I am a potential war criminal."

"If you've spent any time trolling the blogosphere, you've probably noticed a peculiar literary trend: the pervasive habit of writers inexplicably placing exclamation points at the end of otherwise unremarkable sentences. Sort of like this! This is done to suggest an ironic detachment from the writing of an expository sentence! It's supposed to signify that the writer is self-aware! And this is idiotic. It's the saddest kind of failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader really isn't sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend that they're amused. All those extraneous exclamation points are like little splatters of canned laughter: They represent the “form of funny,” which is more easily understood (and more easily constructed) than authentic funniness."

"Even if this person's girlfriend was a hateful bitch, you would sleep with her out of spite."

"If this person slept with your girlfriend, she would never be attractive to you again."

"The satisfaction you feel from your own success pales in comparison to the despair you feel from this person's personal triumphs, even if those triumphs are completely unrelated to your life."

"This person has done at least two (2) things that would be classified as "unforgivable.""

"If you meet someone who has the same first name as this person, you immediately like them less."

"Every time you talk to this person, you lie."

"If your archenemy tried to kill you, this person would attempt to stop him."

"People who barely know the two of you assume you are close friends; people who know both of you intimately suspect you profoundly hate each other."

"If invited, you would go to this person's wedding and give them a spice rack, but you would secretly hope that their marriage ends in a bitter, public divorce."

"You and this person once competed for the same woman, and you both failed."

"At some point in the past, this person was (arguably) your best friend."

"The Joker was Batman's nemesis, but-ironically-his archenemy was Superman, since Superman made Batman entirely mortal and generally nonessential. Nobody likes to admit this, but Batman fucking hated Superman; Superman is the reason Batman became an alcoholic."

"We all concede that 'they' rule 'us'. But here is the secret shame of that amorphous entity that makes us all cower in shame: 'they' are losers. 'They' are failures. 'They' don't realize that life is-almost without exception-an absolute meritocracy, and everyone who succeeds completely deserves it. (The exceptions being Dale Peck, MTV on-air personalities who aren't Kurt Loder, Al Franken, and myself)"

"If rain was God crying, I think God was drunk and his girlfriend just slept with Zeus."

"We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you'll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there's still one more tier to all this; there is always one person who you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real--but you create the context. And context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they're often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else."

"Seeing no resolution to my existential recognition of loss, I decide to eat lunch."

"In fact, there may be a day in the near future when you find yourself in a conversation about this book, and someone will ask you what the story is really about, beyond the rudimentary narrative of a cross-country death trip based on a magazine article. And it's very likely you will say, "well, the larger thesis is somewhat underdeveloped, but there is this point early in the story where he takes a woman to Ithaca for no real reason, and it initially seems innocuous, but - as you keep reading - you sort of see how this behaviour is a self-perpetuating problem that keeps reappearing over and over again." In all probability, you will also complain about the author's reliance on self-indulgent, postmodern self-awareness, which will prompt the person you're conversing with to criticize the influence of Dave Eggers on the memoir-writing genre. Then your cell phone will ring, and you will agree to meet someone for brunch."

"But the bottom line is that I am still willing to die a painful public death, assuming my execution destroys the game of soccer (or - at the very least - convinces people to shut up about it)."

"We smooch hardcore."

"Were there really this many women in 1985 saying to their husbands, "Gee, honey, I'd love to have random strangers masturbate to a jpeg image of me deepthroating a titanium dildo, but there's no medium for that. Guess we'll have to watch 'Falcon Crest.'"

"Whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living. And someone needs to take the fall for this. So instead of blaming no one (which is kind of cowardly) or blaming everyone (which is kind of meaningless), I'm going to blame John Cusack."

"This is the kind of shit that would prompt Tyler Durden to hit somebody in the face."

"Even eternally free people are enslaved by the process of living."

"Psychologically, the internet is very marxist. Everyone with a modem has access to the same information, so we all get jammed into a technological middle class."

"Important things are inevitably cliché."

"[Coldplay is] a British pop group whose success derives from their ability to write melodramatic alt-rock songs about fake love. It does not matter that Coldplay is the shittiest fucking band I've ever heard in my entire fucking life, or that they sound like a mediocre photocopy of Travis (who sounds like a mediocre photocopy of Radiohead), or that their greatest fucking artistic achievement is a video where the blandly attractive frontman walks on a beach on a cloudy afternoon. None of that matters. What matters is that Coldplay manufactures fake love as frenetically as the Ford fucking Motor Company manufactures Mustangs. . . "For you I bleed myself dry," sang the blockhead vocalist, brilliantly informing us that stars in the sky are, in fact, yellow."

"This SimChuck is one suave bastard."

"My songs bring images to the listener's mind. The object is to transport my listeners to another place, some place sacred and spiritual that will make them glad they took the ride."

"The piano is always true to me. In times of despair, happiness, and joy, its mood is always my own."

"I am a composer first and foremost, and have always believed that being able to write memorable melodies is what sets musicians apart."

"Time and persistence has shown me that I can succeed at sharing my art with others as a musician while running my own music business. And that kind of success is as good as I could have ever wished for."

"A lot of musicians don’t learn the business. You just have to be well-rounded in both areas. You have to understand publishing. You have to understand how you make money, what’s in demand, what helps you make the most out of your talent."

"All the information you need is available to you to have a successful career in music, if you're paying attention, and not closed off to anything. Remember, Perseverance is King."

"Through instrumental music, I’m allowed to come up with musical ideas that allow the listener to create their own impression of my song. If you add lyrics about a girl in the song, the listener doesn’t have a choice of what the song is about, it’s told to them. My musical writings allow me to express anything. It’s easier for me to tell a story of something I’ve encountered this way then to verbalize it. And my feelings are explored more in my compositions compared to what I could ever say in a few sentences."

"Music allows a person to express their deepest thoughts, thoughts that cannot be expressed with just words. I am often asked how I begin a song or develop a melody from nothing. That is the spiritual aspect of creating. Finding something deep within yourself that can only be created by you."

"Musically I try to connect a common bridge between such exhilarating feelings as performing at the Acropolis, to the emotions each and every one of us feel everyday. In the end, a good melody will always stand the test of time."

"Basically, I write from a two person standpoint. First, I let the song take hold and I put down the idea as a raw emotional statement. Then I let it breathe and come back, approaching from more of an objective point of view. This allows me to rediscover the true meaning I intended in the beginning, shedding new light on how I can best represent that to the listener."

"Under the administration of Rhodes, there were the fewest laws, the widest freedom, the least crime, and the turest justice, that I have ever seen in any part of the world."

"I am more afraid of an army of a hundred sheep led by a lion than an army of a hundred lions led by a sheep."

"As far as we can look back into history, the downfall of any nation can be traced from the moment that nation became timid about spending its best blood."

"There is nothing that sharpens a man's senses so acutely as to know that bitter and determined enemies are in pursuit of him night and day."

"Remember that the worst accidents occur in the middle of the road."

""a light rinse" would be sufficient. Said in response to George Romney's claim that he had been "brainwashed" by the US military leaders in Vietnam. It is not clear where or when exactly the quote was supposedly said. See this entry from MediaMythAlert."