Blount 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.

I didn't actually know what regret tasted like - but I imagined if it did have a flavor, it would be lutefisk. — Angela N. Blount

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.

Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn't mean to take. — Angela N. Blount

Have you ever tried thinking of God as a person instead of an all-powerful vending machine that never gives you the right amount of change? He has feelings too, you know. — Angela N. Blount

As far as I could tell, the quickest way to a geeky guy's heart usually involved geometric shapes. — Angela N. Blount

The only thing I want more than you, is to do right by you. — Angela N. Blount

Obstacles are opportunities turned upside down ... or prisons self-imposed. — Chriscinthia Blount

Don't expect a man will try any harder to keep you than he did to get you. — Angela N. Blount

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.

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

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

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

Everybody's damaged. It's just a question of how badly, and whether you're healing or still bleeding. — Angela N. Blount

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

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.

Equality before the law in a true democracy is a matter of right. It cannot be a matter of charity or of favor or of grace or of discretion. — Wiley Blount Rutledge

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Roy Blount, who is the funniest person I know, journeys deep into the dark heart of humor and brings back a wonderfully insightful, superbly crafted song of the soul that had me laughing and crying too — Dave Barry

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.

His attentive treatment of her had nothing to do with the presumption that she was weak, and everything to do with the conviction that she was valuable. — Angela N. Blount

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.

It was not by accident or coincidence that the rights to freedom in speech and press were coupled in a single guaranty with the rights of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition for redress of grievances. All these, though not identical, are inseparable. They are cognate rights, and therefore are united in the first Article's assurance. — Wiley Blount Rutledge

Repertitious has not had nearly the success in entering the language that serendipitous has had, most likely because its PR team isn't nearly as good. The noun form of the latter, serendipity, was made up in the 1750s by the novelist Horace Walpole, based on Serendip (a former name for Sri Lanka). Repertitious, on the other hand, has its first mention in Thomas Blount's dictionary of 1656. Writers - 1, lexicographers - 0. Resentient — Ammon Shea

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.

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

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.

When God throws something your way, catch it! — Chriscinthia Blount

Writer's block is caused by forcing your will on the Divine. — Chriscinthia Blount

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.

Blount sat down to the table and leaned over close to Singer. There are those who know and those who don't know. And for every ten thousand who don't know there's only one who knows. That's the miracle of all time - the fact that these millions know so much but don't know this. It's like in the fifteenth century when everybody believed the world was flat and only Columbus and a few other fellows knew the truth. But it's different in that it took talent to figure that the earth is round. While the truth is so obvious it's a miracle of all history that people don't know. — Carson McCullers

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.

Then, by your definition... I'm in love with you. — Angela N. Blount

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.

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.

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.

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.

I didn't just love him ... I needed him. Not in some desperate "you complete me" sort of way. No, Vincent didn't make me whole. He improved me. Something about him - something I didn't understand - had a way of amplifying the good in my nature while muting the bad. He was a catalyst for my soul. I didn't need him in order to exist ... I needed him in order to be a better me. — Angela N. Blount

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

Alphabet Juice is the book Roy Blount was born to write, which considering his prodigious talent, is saying a lot. Did you know that the word LAUGH is linguistically related to chickens and pie? This is the book that any of us who urgently, passionately love words-to read them, roll them over the tongue and learn their life stories while laughing and eating chicken and pie-were lucky enough to be born to read. — Cathleen Schine

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 local groceries are all out of broccoli, loccoli. — 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.

There is no easy button in sales. Prospecting is hard, emotionally draining work, and it is the price you have to pay to earn a high income. — Jeb Blount

Some girls had their heads in the clouds. My head was somewhere on the other side of the galaxy. — Angela N. Blount

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.

Romantic love, I think, requires a degree of physical attraction, but devotion is needed to maintain it as an actual relationship. Physical attraction is a feeling you don't really have control over, but devotion is something that has to be chosen. So, ideally ... I suppose it's passion combined with the commitment to value someone else completely above oneself. — Angela N. Blount

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

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

At least you earned your belief in something ... Most people around here just say they believe whatever their family believes. They don't bother thinking for themselves ... And the less they know, the louder they believe it. — Angela N. Blount

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.

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.

It's funny, you know. The times that seem so trivial end up meaning so much. — Jeffrey Blount

I do some eccentric dancing. — Roy Blount Jr.

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

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.

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

You feel more like home to me than any place I've ever been. — Angela N. Blount

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.

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.

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.

Roy Blount's stuff makes me laugh so hard, sometimes I have to go sit in a room and shut the door — Garrison Keillor

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

Why try to fit in, when you're meant to stand out? — Dyphia Blount

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.

I know you can take care of yourself," he said, with absolute certainty. His vivid eyes probed hers. With the same underlying resolve, he lifted a hand and brushed her cheek with his fingertips. "I just don't think ... you shouldn't have to. — Angela N. Blount

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.

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

Choosing to love, in spite of all its complexities, is the only freedom there is. — Chriscinthia Blount

Roy Blount is so funny, and he sounds like he's just talking, and the next thing you know he has tossed off
an essay as elegant and intricately structured as a birdsong. His ear for American speech is better than anybody's. — Ian Frazier

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.

Harrogate saw them going along Blount Avenue Sunday morning. They wore outfits all cut from the same bolt of cloth and in the church pew standing six across they looked like a strip of gaudy wallpaper cut into those linked dolls madfolk pass their time in fashioning. — Cormac McCarthy

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.

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.

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.