Roy Blount Jr. Quotes & Sayings

I heard on public radio recently, there's a thing called Weed Dating. Singles get together in a garden and weed and then they take turns, they keep matching up with other people. Two people will weed down one row and switch over with two other people. It's in Vermont. I don't think I'd be very good at Weed Dating. — Roy Blount Jr.

What is the difference between an author and a writer? A writer, as we know, writes; an author has written. What does an author do? Auth? Authorize? An author authors. But never in the present tense. No one says, when asked what he or she is doing, I'm authoring. — Roy Blount Jr.

Pete Rose is too rich a character to fit on a bronze plaque. He requires a good, trenchant, poignant (ah, Petey) book, and this is it. — Roy Blount Jr.

Lots of people have expressed consternation that I haven't gotten rid of Southern accent, but I just never saw any reason to lose the flavor that I grew up with. I enjoy saying some things with a Southern accent. — Roy Blount Jr.

I think writer's block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out. — Roy Blount Jr.

In the beginning, Atlanta was without form, and void; and it still is. — Roy Blount Jr.

When I was a little kid, of course, I was brown all summer. That's because I was free as a bird- nothing to do but catch bugs all day. — Roy Blount Jr.

Being president of too many well-meaning organizations put my father into an early grave. The lesson in this was not lost on me. — Roy Blount Jr.

Twitter. It's not a good sound, is it? If it were worth doing, there would be a better word for it. — Roy Blount Jr.

An author is a person who can never take innocent pleasure in visiting a bookstore again. Say you go in and discover that there are no copies of your book on the shelves. You resent all the other books - I don't care if they are Great Expectations, Life on the Mississippi and the King James Bible that are on the shelves. — Roy Blount Jr.

I prefer my oysters fried; that way I know my oysters died. — Roy Blount Jr.

I have written some of the clumsiest, most clogged-yet-vagrant, hobbledehoyish, hitch-slipping sentences ever conceived by the human mind. — Roy Blount Jr.

Obama's got a great sense of humor, but mainly he has a great thinking presence, which is uncommon. It's hard to imagine being able to do, think over answers and deliver them on television. If I were president I would constantly be spluttering. — Roy Blount Jr.

A good book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic. — Roy Blount Jr.

A picture's worth a thousand words? A library card's worth millions. — Roy Blount Jr.

The legendary yet factual Curtis Wilkie has been the right man in the right place at an uncanny number of extraordinary times. — Roy Blount Jr.

I like weeding, but I tend to think of it as a solitary activity. — Roy Blount Jr.

Eaters of Wonder Bread
Must be underbred.
So little to eat.
Where's the wheat? — Roy Blount Jr.

If a cat spoke, it would say things like 'Hey, I don't see the problem here. — Roy Blount Jr.

To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. I don't remember what I was like before I learned my ABC's, but for as long as I can remember I have made them with my fingers and felt them in my bones. — Roy Blount Jr.

Any given generation gives the next generation advice that the given generation should have been given by the previous generation but now it's too late. — Roy Blount Jr.

Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party. — Roy Blount Jr.

Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo clinic. — Roy Blount Jr.

Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky. — Roy Blount Jr.

Contemporary American children, if they are old enough to grasp the concept of Santa Claus by Thanksgiving, are able to see through it by December 15th. — Roy Blount Jr.

Certainly people have said a lot of deeply unfortunate and stupid things in Southern accents, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the accent itself. — Roy Blount Jr.

Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ. — Roy Blount Jr.

The more you try to pin a word down, the more you realize that it has its own cape, sword and little hat. — Roy Blount Jr.

Anyone who undertakes the literary grind had better like playing around with words. — Roy Blount Jr.

The North isn't a place. It's just a direction out of the South. — Roy Blount Jr.

The last time somebody said, 'I find I can write much better with a word processor.', I replied, 'They used to say the same thing about drugs.'
Roy Blount Jr. — Roy Blount Jr.

I've never thought it was necessary to make fun of people - you can find fun in people without necessarily mocking them. — Roy Blount Jr.

Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs. — Roy Blount Jr.

I do not know what the cat can have eaten. Usually I know exactly what the cat has eaten. Not only have I fed it to the cat, at the cat's insistence, but the cat has thrown it up on the rug, and someone has tracked it all over onto the other rug. I do not know why cats are such habitual vomiters. They do not seem to enjoy it, judging by the sounds they make while they are doing it. It's their nature. A dog is going to bark. A cat is going to vomit. — Roy Blount Jr.

It's my belief that sanity lies in realizing that reality is not exactly what we had in mind. — Roy Blount Jr.

Perhaps the truth is that heavy literature blooms in extremes of temperature. — Roy Blount Jr.

I think what's really hard is making sense and making what you write clear and smooth-flowing. — Roy Blount Jr.

I always wanted to win the Super Bowl so I could take it and hold it and see what lies beyond it. I think it may be the sun. — Roy Blount Jr.

When I weed, I like to get off into my own head. For one thing, my wife plants and I have trouble telling which plants are weeds and which are my favorite plants. So I tend to hop around and grab the weeds that I know are weeds. So I don't weed all that linearly. I tend to weed haphazardly. — Roy Blount Jr.

We don't want bookstores to die. Authors need them, and so do neighborhoods. — Roy Blount Jr.

I do some eccentric dancing. — Roy Blount Jr.

I think a writer is not an ideal husband ... Writers tend to get off into their own heads and not notice the people that they're living with, or they get irritable with the people that they're living with when the people insist on being noticed. — Roy Blount Jr.

I studied French in high school and German in college and I once took a 24-hour Italian crash course. English has by far the most words in it of any other language. Our money might not be worth anything anymore, but the language is. — Roy Blount Jr.

That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp. — Roy Blount Jr.

According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary. — Roy Blount Jr.

People may think of Southern humor in terms of missing teeth and outhouse accidents, but the best of it is a rich vein running through the best of Southern literature. — Roy Blount Jr.

When it's summer, people sit a lot. Or lie. Lie in the sense of recumbency. A good heavy book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic. Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky. Put The Idiot in your lap or over your face, and you know where you are going to be for the afternoon. — Roy Blount Jr.

The local groceries are all out of broccoli, loccoli. — Roy Blount Jr.

So slip on your goggles and your reading trunks, for the sun is high. Let me leave you with one more thought. In what season of the year do we find ourselves - I'm speaking for a moment in terms of the physical world - wading through things? Surf. Kelp. Books. Summer. — Roy Blount Jr.

The first time I walked into a library, I got so excited I almost wet my pants. — Roy Blount Jr.

A dog will make eye contact. A cat will, too, but a cat's eyes don't even look entirely warm-blooded to me, whereas a dog's eyes look human except less guarded. A dog will look at you as if to say, "What do you want me to do for you? I'll do anything for you." Whether a dog can in fact, do anything for you if you don't have sheep (I never have) is another matter. The dog is willing. — Roy Blount Jr.

Vincent van Gogh's mother painted all of his best things. The famous mailed decapitated ear was a figment of the public relations firm engaged by Van Gogh's dealer. — Roy Blount Jr.

According to that book, only one Marx contributed an unforgotten pun to the Round Tablers' vaunted word games. It wasn't Groucho, who must have been furious. Nor was it Harpo, who for all we know sat at the table naked. Nor was it Chico, who had more dangerous games elsewhere. It was Gummo. Evidently Gummo had a seat at that table at least once, and he made it count. Everybody knows that Dorothy Parker, challenged to make a sentence with the word horticulture, quipped as follows: "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think." But who knew that Gummo, taking on euphoria, came up with this: LEFT TO RIGHT: Harpo, Zeppo, Chico, Groucho, and Gummo, 1957. "Go outside and play," Minnie told the brothers. "Which ones?" they asked. And she said: "Euphoria."* — Roy Blount Jr.

I am often asked: "What are Southern women like?" That is a question that many people feel entitled to an answer to. But I cannot speak with authority - not with authority as it is known in the South - about Southern women. I am acquainted with no more than two-thirds of them, and several of those I haven't seen in some time. — Roy Blount Jr.

There will be birthdays in the next twelve months; books keep well; they're easy to wrap: buy those books now. Buy replacements for any books looking raggedy on your shelves. — Roy Blount Jr.

But authorship is not to be denied. Not even if you are Thomas Pynchon and stonewall all attempts to establish your actual existence. My own feeling is that Pynchon does not exist, and neither do the last five hundred pages of Gravity's Rainbow, but there is no question whatsoever that Thomas Pynchon is an author. — Roy Blount Jr.

Ham's substantial, ham is fat. Ham is firm and sound. Ham's what God was getting at When He made pigs so round. — Roy Blount Jr.

When mannequins have nipples, it's a cold-hearted world. — Roy Blount Jr.

I am open to the accusation that I see compost as an end it itself. But we do grow some real red damn tomatoes such as you can't get in the stores. And potatoes, beans, lettuce, collards, onions, squash, cauliflower, eggplant, carrots, peppers. Dirt in you own backyard, producing things you eat. Makes you wonder. — Roy Blount Jr.

I was overstating my case. I wasn't at all sure I had a case and I was overstating it. I have a tendency sometimes to start saying things I don't necessarily actually think, because I don't want people to leap too soon to conclude that I can't possibly think what I think they think I can't possibly think. — Roy Blount Jr.

Going to Vanderbilt did a lot of things for me, and one of the things it cured me of was the need to follow college football. — Roy Blount Jr.

Think about scary movies: There's a fine line between horror and humor. — Roy Blount Jr.

I just think lots of words have physicality. How about the word 'wobble?' You think that's arbitrary? When you say the word 'wince,' you wince. How about that? — Roy Blount Jr.

Obama's the most thoughtful-sounding president I can remember. He seems to be saying what he wants to say, and that is a great relief. He always sounds like he's thinking about what he's saying while he's saying it, and that's a rare thing in politicians. — Roy Blount Jr.

Cats have intercepted my footsteps at the ankle for so long that my gait, both at home and on tour, has been compared to that of a man wading through low surf. — Roy Blount Jr.

Twiddle-twiddle away at my softly clicky keyboard for a while, making twiddly adjustments all along- and then print what I have twiddled. Glare at the printout and snarl and curse and scribble almost illegibly all over it with a ballpoint pen. Go back to the machine and enter the scribbles. Repeat this procedure until I hate the very meaning of every word I know. — Roy Blount Jr.

English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies. — Roy Blount Jr.

When money gets too far away from actual, physical, real equity and property it gets too abstract and too distantly derived and then suddenly it's not worth anything anymore. And the same is true of language. — Roy Blount Jr.

People don't necessarily want or need to be done unto as you would have them do unto you. They want to be done unto as they want to be done unto. — Roy Blount Jr.