Awardee Quotes & Sayings

Polish has developed unimpeded; someone put their foot out and tripped English. The human grammar is a fecund weed, like grass. Languages like English, Persian, and Mandarin Chinese are mowed lawns, indicative of an interruption in natural proliferation. — John McWhorter

I will be thirty years old again in thirty seconds. I will take the best room in the Grand Central or the Orndorff Hotel. I will dine on oysters and palomitas and wash them down with white wine. Then I will go to the Acme or Keating's or the Big Gold Bar and sit down and draw my cards and fill an inside straight and win myself a thousand dollars. Then I will go to the Red Light or the Monte Carlo and dance the floor afire. Then I will go to a parlor house and have them top up a bathtub with French champagne and I will strip and dive into it with a bare-assed blonde and a redhead and an octoroon and the four of us will get completely presoginated and laugh and let long bubbly farts at hell and baptize each other in the name of the Trick, the Prick, and the Piper-Heidsick. — Glendon Swarthout

The great thing about social movements is everybody gets to be a part of them. — Jim Wallis

Well dress me up in a tutu, put my on a unicycle, and call me Caroline the Dancing Bear. You're a fugging dumper — John Green

Air Force officials appear to be more concerned with appeasing the powerful Religious Right lobbyists who have argued against any guidelines that seek to respect and protect the rights of all cadets
not just those adhering to majority religious beliefs. — Barry W. Lynn

Presently, struck by a sudden thought, Charles said
"Captain Wentworth, which way are you going? Only to Gay Street, or farther up the town?" "I hardly know," replied Captain Wentworth, surprised. "Are you going as high as Belmont? Are you going near Camden Place? Because, if you are, I shall have no scruple in asking you to take my place, and give Anne your arm to her father's door. She is rather done for this morning, and must not go so far without help, and I ought to be at that fellow's in the Market Place. — Jane Austen

The qualities we appreciate in a character are not the same as those we would look for in a college roommate. — Margaret Atwood

Presidential biography is, by its nature, out of scale; no character is bigger, no action greater, than the person and the doings of the American president. — Jill Lepore

Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings, slender but as a steel-blade, fair yet terrible. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The party impulse is a very subversive impulse. I mean, you know, a lot of artists have too much integrity to sell their art as a brand; but who has so much integrity that they would turn down a party? — Terence McKenna

The charming grass, elegant water, fascinating winds, admirable rocks and delicate sands are never alone. — Delano Johnson

The subconscious taboo that affects all fathers when in the presence of men who are there because of their daughters rather than themselves. If you like another man and you are honest, you speak freely, discuss women over beer, shoot the shit about politics. But no matter how deep the potential liking, it is impossible to open up completely to a man who is dangling your daughter's potential defloration between his legs. — Stephen King

Science has eliminated distance. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

We don't realize how much we create reality through language. If we say that life is hard, it will be hard. — Fernando Flores

[The United States is] founded on the principles of Christianity — Franklin D. Roosevelt