Quotes from Glee

Though it's a pretty blatant ripoff of Election, and our enthusiasm for the new Fox comedy Glee has faded a bit since the first two episodes due to a decision to apparently make it a show about high school pregnancy and coming out stories, there's still some choice lines in the show. Here a few of them, probably incorrect since we're doing this from memory, but hey, we're not going to watch the whole darn episode again just to get it right...or are we? -TLB

"Who's Josh Groban? Kill yourself."

"I've got a phoner. That's an interview. I think I'm going to take it on my iPhone."

"And this room is where our daughter or gay son will sleep."

"He (Josh Groban) is an angel sent from heaven to deliver platinum records onto us."

"Why do you think it's my fault?"
"I don't see anyone else around here holding a plate of 'I'm sorry' cookies, do you?"

"I'm a good guy: I'll put up with your crazy, I'm a minority - so they can never fire me. That's about as good as it gets around here."

"All this place needs is twelve bodies under the floorboards covered in lye."

"I bust the windows out yo car."

"If you liked it you should've put a ring on it." (See, there are songs in the show...)

"I want to take over the Glee club"
"Do you want to captain the Titanic too?"

"I'm not homophobic. I have two gay dads."

---

Just watch the darn show already. It's on Hulu. No excuses.

-TLB

Anne Lamott Quote

"I remember my friend Nora saying once that she was seriously considering suicide, but that she wanted to lose five pounds first."

-Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

Bukowski on Rejection

Bukowski on Rejection

"I don't write too much anymore but when I do I get rejected enough and when I get rejected I usually find, after reading the poem, that the editor in one way or another was right. and instead of writing a solemn and bitchy note I sit down and carve me out another poem."

-Charles Bukowski, July 1968

Paul Mooney on 9/11

"I haven't seen white folks this scared since the last Indian raid."

-Paul Mooney, from his comedy album Analyzing White America
..
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Quote from Graham Green on Writing

"Only stop when it's going well."

-Graham Greene

A Bukowski Quote where he Quotes Someone Else

"...but, basically, you have a right to publish anybody you want to. I think of something John Thomas told me one night, 'No matter what you do, a certain number of people are going to dislike it, others will like it, and the vast majority will not give a damn one way or the other.' Once you understand this, the snipers will not make so much difference."

-Charles Bukowski to John Martin, June 22, 1970

David Sedaris on Undecided Voters and Sorta Comparing John McCain to a Platter of Shit

"Being undecided at this point is like being offered the choice between a platter of chicken and a platter of shit with glass in it and then asking how the chicken is cooked."

-David Sedaris, October 2008

Barack Obama on the Role of Government

“Government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology.”

-Barack Obama, 2008

The New Yorker on Why You Should Vote Obama

I don't usually post on the weekend NOR quote The New Yorker but tucked away in the Comment section is a little gem called "The Choice," written by the editors of the magazine. I wouldn't have read it, except that my girlfriend said "you have to read this." I do what she says. Because that's how good relationships work. -KV

"At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader's name is Barack Obama."

-The Editors of the New Yorker, Oct. 13, 2008

Another Quote from Charles Bukowski

Another Quote from Bukowski. Because people like reading them. -KV

"all I need now is 60 days in jail or 10 years, and my whole thought process will be realigned. everything happens for the best and the worst, like when Marina was first born, the line popped into my head, 'she will probably be fucked by a sailor who never read Walter De La Mare.' that was then. now, I think, so what?"

-Charles Bukowski, Letter to John William Corrington, January 3, 1968

The Truth about Earmarks and Taxes

Here are a two quotes that should clear up the whole Earmark-Taxes debacle.

Taxes

"A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken Sept. 5 to Sept. 7 found that 51 percent of voters think Obama would raise their taxes, even though his plan would actually cut taxes for the overwhelming majority of Americans."

-The Washington Post, 9/10/08


Earmarks

"At a rally today, Sen. McCain again asserted that Sen. Obama has requested nearly a billion in earmarks. In fact, the Illinois senator requested $311 million last year, according to the Associated Press, and none this year. In comparison, Gov. Palin has requested $750 million in her two years as governor -- which the AP says is the largest per-capita request in the nation."

-The Wall Street Journal, 9/9/08


I guess it's really not a "debacle." On one side there are "facts," and on the other...things that ain't so sweet.

-KV

Another Quote from Bukowski

"shit, it would be sweet to get paid to write! to just sit here and bang bang bang, and get paid to do what I have to do anyhow - like getting paid to shit or fuck, what? too much but worth a try. and prob. will not happen."

-Charles Bukowski, June, 1967. From Charles Bukowski, Selected Letters, Volume 2: 1965-1970.

Jonathan Gold - One of our Favorites...

ONE OF OUR FAVORITES - JONATHAN GOLD

Jonathan Gold, Pulitzer Prize winning food critic for the LA Weekly, Gourmet Magazine, and more, is one of our favorite writers.

If you just moved to LA (welcome my acting/screenwriting friend!) add these two books to the bookshelf your over-priced Los Feliz apartment. Lord knows you didn't come to LA to read, but trust me, you NEED these books, like, now.

The Thomas Guide 2008 - Los Angeles County Street Guide

and

Counter Intelligence - Jonathan Gold

Sure you can read his articles every Thursday in the LA Weekly, but he only has one restaurant review, and guess what - everybody reads that. Try getting a reservation at El Sazon Oaxaqueno after a Gold write up? (Ha! Trick question! They don't take reservations!)

Instead, pick up Counter Intelligence. With hundreds of restaurant recommendations - most of them extremely affordable to downright "cheap" - you'll be instantly converted to Gold and believe in his subtitle: "Where to eat in the real Los Angeles."

Oh yeah, and he's also one of the best writers out there. Of any genre. Here are some quotes from Counter Intelligence:

"Lavishly buttered bowls of grits appear at breakfast, served with hot cornbread, eggs any way you like them, and pungent, profoundly salty slabs of real country ham-the kind of breakfast that any sensible person would trade for the ability to squeeze into a pair of size-6 jeans."

-Gold on Johnny Reb's

"Hot Dog on a Stick is yet another gift Southern California has bestowed upon the world...A summer behind the fryers at Hot Dog on a Stick is almost the archetypal first teenage job, and the garishly costumed employees figure in local teenage iconagraphy as surely as lifeguards or cheerleaders."

-Gold on Hot Dog on a Stick

"The cooks are Asian; the waitresses Peruvian. The walls are decorated with pictures of campesinos and llamas and gory bleeding Jesuses; above the serving counter sit plaster Japanese good-luck cats, paws raised in greeting...Across the street is a well-stocked liquor store where you can pick up a six-pack of Sapporo to drink with your dinner.

-Gold on Mario's Peruvian Seafood

"Like all good hamburgers, a Pie 'N Burger burger is about texture: the crunch of lettuce, the charred, slightly friable surface of the meat, the outer rim of the bun crisped to almost the consistency of toast...The slice of American cheese, if you have ordered a cheeseburger, does not melt into the patty, but stands glossily aloof form it, as if it were mocking the richness of the sandwich rather than adding to the general effect."

-Gold on Pie 'N Burger
(The best damn hamburger joint in the world, I dare you to find a better place. Dare!)

Hungry? Me too.

-KV

Who the hell is Tucker Bounds?

All I know is that he is running for "biggest asshole on the planet." Yes, that's an award. We give it out here at The Brothel. Whenever we want.

Really, I can't find anything else about the guy. Can you?

Meanwhile, here are some Tucker Bounds to give you a taste of his "character."

“Barack Obama’s latest negative attack ad shows his celebrity is matched only by his hypocrisy."

And the more recent...

"Paris Hilton might not be as big a celebrity as Barack Obama, but she obviously has a better energy plan."

Who's the Freak?

I can't say where I got this photo (friend of a friend), but that's great stuff.

Reminds me of the first line Chris Cooper's character says in American Beauty: "This country's going straight to hell." I'd add: "Led by people holding signs that say 'Fag Marriage.'

Quote from Jack Handey

"If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason."

-From Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey

Mike Figgis Quote

"Anybody can buy a pencil and paper, but not everybody can draw."

-Mike Figgis, the director of Leaving Las Vegas from his book Digital Filmmaking


Digital Filmmaking is the perfect book for anyone with a project where they make a short film a week.

Bukowski Quote of the Day-Week-Whenever

"An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way."

Yes, another quote from Charles Bukowski...because a lot people search for quotes by him, and we want those people to arrive here, at The Literary Brothel, and not on thinkexist or some dumb quote site.

So, thank you, people, for the searchers.

And welcome to The Literary Brothel...

Charles Bukowski Quote

"It's not the large tragedies that moil us to pieces - we are fucking well ready for those. It's the little scratchings and drippings, the continuous stubbing of the toes and elbows, the car that won't start, the piece of tooth that breaks off as you are biting into a peach, dirty stockings, a sudden face in the market goring your peace like a bull, a ring in the bathtub, constipation, insomnia, a dirty newspaper, toothpaste too sweet, a fingernail flipping back and ripping from the finger...these things again and again, the similar small biting donnybrook continuous hail...these tear us to the final pieces. ah ha."

-Charles Bukowski, 1967
From Charles Bukowski Selected Letters, Volume 2: 1965-1970

Five Quotes We Like from Tolstoy, Salinger, Morrison, Fitzgerald, and Ferlinghetti

From 2001 - 2004, on the main page of The Literary Brothel we would put up a quote (with comments) and keep it there until we got sick of it. Sometimes that was hours. Other times, months. Now we've got thirty or forty of these life-changing wisdom nuggets just lying around, blocking the entryway. Like tribbles.

And so, The Literary Brothel presents the first installment of a series we mysteriously call "Five Quotes We Like" where we will publish five of those quotes from our archive at one time.

WARNING: Read at your own risk (of enlightenment)

Five Quotes We Like - Part I: Writers Tell Us Things About Life

“Remember then: there is only one time that is important—Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.”

-Leo Tolstoy

"I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth."

-Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye

“What they did know was that you couldn’t go anywhere without stepping in their pearly shit, and it was hard to hand up clothes, pull weeds or just sit on the front porch when robins were flying and dying all around you.”

-Toni Morrison, from Sula

"His wife (The Literary Brothel) was shrill, languid, handsome and horrible."

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, from The Great Gatsby (parentheses our own)

"We mix drinks out of the insane liquors of the imagination and are perpetually surprised that no one staggers."

-Lawrence Ferlinghetti