Collected script and citations



she was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague 'she' of all the poetry books...
—Gustave Flaubert


They are the canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil, and literal, warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere.
—Sonia Sotomayor


Oh fuck 'the longings and agonies of youth.'
—John Irving


It was the first time I knew beautiful. Had imagined it for myself. Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.
—Toni Morrison


Do I cherish my wildness more than I fear their rejection?
—Alexis Pauline Gumbs


So many painful experiences that she still carried deep in the marrow of her bones.
—Clint Smith
I think one day I shall write a book of ‘Eccentrics’.
—Virginia Woolf


We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened.
―Tom Stoppard


It is the absoluteness of my abandonment of Chinese, undertaken with such detemrination that is a kind of suicide.
—Yiyun Li


As I made my way down the hairpin road, a sage brush-studded wall of sand ot my right, I felt keenly aware of my own life.
—Carl Zimmer


A chain of communication going back to Feynman himself has been established by virtue of his membership in a community which passed the name on from link to link. Not by a ceremony that he makes in private in his study.
—Kripke
'Since the world is ending,' Peter quoted from behind us, 'why not let the children touch the paintings?'
—Ben Lerner


Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss.
—Ursule K. Le Guin


she’s sure, without a doubt, that the loud roaring things will love her back...
—Ada Limón


I must to the learned. In good time!
—Shakespeare


Fools follow after vanity, men of evil wisdom.
—from the Dhammapada (anon)


A doubt. Slender as a hair... Sweet sweet homecoming. Sweet as the scent of face powder in the air, jasmine, sticky liquor. Smudged fingerprint on the door. Crushed cigarette in a glass. Wrinkle in the brain crumpling to a crease.
—Sandra Cisneros