Joe Queenan Quotes & Sayings

At long last, I felt a sense of accomplishment and a sense of closure. In the secret places of my very small heart, I had long entertained dreams of coming back in my next life as a moron. — Joe Queenan

Everyone looks like they've just stepped out of a Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting that he never got around to finishing because even he knew it was too over the top. It — Joe Queenan

The world is changing, but I am not changing with it. There is no e-reader or Kindle in my future. My philosophy is simple: Certain things are perfect the way they are. The sky, the Pacific Ocean, procreation and the Goldberg Variations all fit this bill, and so do books. Books are sublimely visceral, emotionally evocative objects that constitute a perfect delivery systemBooks that we can touch; books that we can smell; books that we can depend on. Books that make us believe, for however short a time, that we shall all live happily ever after. — Joe Queenan

Library events scare me, as they provide refuge for local historians, fabulists, tellers of tall tales, historical reenactors, and even dream weavers. Not to mention the single most feared creature on the planet: the self-published poet — Joe Queenan

In other words, the man at the ticket office had personally had intimate social and commercial progress with more nitwits, dowagers, traveling salesmen, conventioneers, old fogies, and outright jackasses than the entire population of the City of Brotherly Love. I — Joe Queenan

I like to stack them up on the shelf and move them about and rearrange them according to new parameters-height, color, thickness, provenance, publisher, author's nationality, subject matter, likelihood that I will ever read them. Then I put them back the way they were. — Joe Queenan

If you have read 6,000 books in your lifetime, or even 600, it's probably because at some level you find 'reality' a bit of a disappointment. — Joe Queenan

KINDNESS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WISDOM; RECOGNITION OF THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM. I have never found this to be the case. I've gotten this far being wise without being kind, and my feeling is: If it ain't broke don't fix it. — Joe Queenan

Martin Scorcese is probably America's greatest living director, and while he is not a titan like John Ford or Alfred Hitchcock or Federico Fellini, he is certainly consistently more interesting than Steven Spielberg, Brian de Palma, Francis Ford Coppola or Woody Allen. Even a failure like Gangs of New York or a curiosity like The Aviator is more interesting and ambitious than Munich, The Black Dahlia or Scoop. — Joe Queenan

I do not accept reading tips from strangers, especially from indecisive men whose shirt collars are a dramatically different color from the main portion of the garment. — Joe Queenan

Lars is played by Ryan Gosling, the Prince of Tics, whose idea of acting is to wait a few beats before reacting to other people's remarks, as if acting were merely a matter of adhering to the seven-second delay rule. Jack Nicholson has made a career out of doing this sort of thing, as did Paul Newman, as did Marlon Brando (who the other two learned it from), but they didn't do it all the time and they were more fun to look at ... Lars And The Real Girl joins a number of other recent films in the category of motion pictures where the director doesn't know that his protagonist is unsympathetic. — Joe Queenan

Saddling another person with a book he did not ask for has always seemed to me like a huge psychological imposition, like forcing someone to eat a chicken biryani without so much as inquiring whether they like cilantro. — Joe Queenan

But such a fortuitous rescue from ethical bondage is rare indeed. — Joe Queenan

It is a remarkable irony that many of the best shows in London - Chicago, Oklahoma! - and even such harmless diversions as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast - are imports from the colonies, while the homegrown productions include such luxurious twaddle as Mamma Mia!, Bombay Dreams, and Starlight Express. Brits who view' American culture with disdain are the ones who must pay the freight here, being careful not to throw stones from inside their glass houses. Though it is doubtless a bitter pill to swallow, not everything that is idiotic, pandering, or unsophisticated originated in the land of the free and the home of Kenny G. Americans did not invent Cats. — Joe Queenan

A friend once told me that the real message Bram Stoker sought to convey in 'Dracula' is that a human being needs to live hundreds and hundreds of years to get all his reading done; that Count Dracula, basically nothing more than a misunderstood bookworm, was draining blood from the necks of 10,000 hapless virgins not because he was the apotheosis of pure evil but because it was the only way he could live long enough to polish off his extensive reading list. But I have no way of knowing if this is true, as I have not yet found time to read 'Dracula. — Joe Queenan

Because to the poor, books are not diversions. Book are siege weapons. — Joe Queenan

People who need to possess the physical copy of a book, and not merely an electronic version, are in some sense mysteics. We believe that the objects themselves are sacred, not just the stories they tell. We believe that books possess the power to transubstantiate, to turn darkness into light, to make being out of nothingness. — Joe Queenan

Incapable of conjuring up any facial expression that she did not learn from watching television, Jessica Alba plays a brilliant scientist who inadvertently acquires the ability to make herself invisible. This is not a gift Alba seems particularly comfortable with, as the last thing she needs is to be heard but not seen. — Joe Queenan

Every life, even the best ones, ends in sadness. Books hold out hope that things may end otherwise. — Joe Queenan

Book lovers are engaged with writers in a private communion that occurs in some vaporous cenacle of the mind. — Joe Queenan

It was once argued that 'Starring Sylvester Stallone' were the three scariest words in the English language but until I saw Adam Sandler I'd always thought the three scariest words in the English language were 'starring Dan Aykroyd.' — Joe Queenan

Purists maintain that if you go to a baseball game you will almost always see something you have never seen before. Unfortunately, it usually takes place in the stands. — Joe Queenan

I have never squandered an opportunity to read. — Joe Queenan

While traveling in this highly idiosyncratic country, it became clear to me that the Scots did not like the English. — Joe Queenan

And watched Alan Rickman act up a storm in Private Lives. Someone once said that this highly mannered actor had made a career out of being brilliant in roles where no brilliance was required. — Joe Queenan

A friend tells a story about taking his ten-year-old son to a Jets game. The game was being played during a driving rain on a freezing cold day, and the Jets lost by twenty points to a team they were supposed to beat. As they headed toward the exits, the boy looked up, with tears in his eyes, and asked, 'Dad, why are we Jets fans? — Joe Queenan

On this side of the Atlantic, the arrival of a new Woody Allen movie is always greeted with tremors of bliss by filmgoers past the age of 60, with mild curiosity by those in their 50s, with trepidation by those in their 40s, with fear and loathing by those in their 30s, and with complete indifference by anyone younger. An icon to baby boomers, who will never concede that when something is over, it is really over (Clapton, McCartney, Santana, the 1960s), Allen has not made a truly memorable film since Bullets On Broadway back in 1994 — Joe Queenan

Choochiness is yet another British term that has no precise meaning, but, like pornography, you know it when you see it. The way I have things stacked up, choochiness is a particularly British amalgam of cuddlywuddliness, cutesypiedness, and butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouthedness that embraces everything from shops named The Ketch to Hugh Grant's stammer. It is a grating and often maddening behavioral pattern that makes others want to reach out and pinch the choochster's cheeks while secretly longing to stuff a hand grenade right down his throat. "Paul McCartney is choochy; John Lennon is not," says my brother-in-law, Max, who fled England for France in 1976, largely to escape from rampant choochiness. "Paul McCartney: choochy. John Lennon: not choochy. That's the difference." THERE — Joe Queenan

But only the English would insist on two separate versions of Gainsborough's checkout line. Or even have the chutzpah to suggest it. Julius Caesar didn't say "Et tu, Brute?" and "Where's the Praetorian guard when you really need them?" John Wilkes Booth didn't shriek "Sic semper tyrannis" and "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how'd you like the play? — Joe Queenan

They couldn't abide the fact that the country was almost certainly founded by the Celts, who were just a little bit too close to the Irish for comfort. — Joe Queenan

He used books the same way he used alcohol: to pretend that he was not here, and if he was here, that he was happy for a change. — Joe Queenan

As was the case in Requiem for a Dream, Pollock, A Beautiful Mind, House of Sand and Fog, The Hulk and Dark Water, Jennifer Connelly's mere presence in a film guarantees that things will turn out badly for the male lead, as Connelly is always cast as the Angel of Death. Fun to hang out with, great eyes, amazing eyebrows, but the Angel of Death. — Joe Queenan

People who prefer e-books ... think that books merely take up space. This is true, but so do your children and Prague and the Sistine Chapel. — Joe Queenan

I was raised as a Catholic and received the body and blood of Jesus Christ every Sunday at communion until I was thirty years of age, when I became a vegetarian. — Joe Queenan

Books, ingeniously coupled with music and alcohol, enabled the Irish to transcend reality. — Joe Queenan

Good books to not invite unanimity. They invite discord, mayhem, knife fights, blood feuds. — Joe Queenan

The problem with the English Patient is that to enjoy it, you have to be either English or patient. — Joe Queenan

Most people read drivel. That is their prerogative. The case can be made that it is better to read drivel than to read nothing, on the theory that people will eventually tire of garbage and move on to something more meaty, like trash. — Joe Queenan

Good books don't make you think, because the author has already done all of the thinking for you, but a terrible book can really give your brain a workout, because you spend so much time wondering what incredibly dumb thing the author will say next. — Joe Queenan

Electronic books are ideal for people who value the information contained in them, or who have vision problems, or who like to read on the subway, or who do not want other people to see how they are amusing themselves, or who have storage and clutter issues, but they are useless for people who are engaged in an intense, lifelong love affair with books. Books that we can touch; books that we can smell; books that we can depend on. — Joe Queenan

I dread that awkward moment when a friend hands you the book that changed his or her life, and it is a book that you have despised since you were fourteen. — Joe Queenan

It is never a good sign when the most exciting thing on television is a dancing Republican. — Joe Queenan

Books are a way of saying: This room seems to have more than its fair share of bozos in it. — Joe Queenan

Books did not need to be beautiful back in the Fifties, because nothing else was beautiful back then. Books were simply there: you read them because they were diverting or illuminating or in some way useful but not because the books themselves were aesthetically appealing. — Joe Queenan

Lending books to other people is merely a shrewd form of housecleaning. — Joe Queenan

My books have been part of my life forever. They have been good soldiers, boon companions. Every book has survived numerous purges over the years; each book has repeatedly been called onto the carpet and asked to explain itself. I own no book that has not fought the good fight, taken on all comers, and earned the right to remain. If a book is there, it is there for a reason. — Joe Queenan

Here I am referring to the types of books that thirtyish women devour at private swim clubs, often to the dismay of their drowning children. — Joe Queenan

From the moment I own a book, even before I open it to the first page, I feel that it has in some way changed my life. I treat my books the same way I treat my clothes or my shoes or my records: I use them. — Joe Queenan

Still, it was impossible to deny: Going all the way to London without taking time out to attend a few horrendous plays was like making a special trip to Hell without ever asking to meet Satan. So this time around, I decided to plunge in headfirst. Never a fan of Noel Coward, I nonetheless reported to the Albery Theatre, forked over a king's ransom for a good seat, and watched Alan Rickman act up a storm in Private Lives. — Joe Queenan

Unless paid, I never read books by or about businessmen or politicians, nor should anyone else. — Joe Queenan

Great writers say things that are so beautiful, the very act of repeating them makes life itself more beautiful. — Joe Queenan

Children are not born with their hearts hardened in this fashion, not even Irish-Catholic children. They have to be taught by professionals. — Joe Queenan

Reading is the way mankind delays the inevitable. Reading is the way we shake our fist at the sky. As long as we have these epic, improbable reading projects arrayed before us, we cannot breathe our last: Tell the Angel of Death to come back later; I haven't quite finished Villette. — Joe Queenan