Buckley Quotes & Sayings

There is no good singing, there is only present and absent. — Jeff Buckley

The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house. — William F. Buckley Jr.

[The] act of gratitude is nowadays is probably more often neglected than overdone. — William F. Buckley Jr.

To fail to experience gratitude when walking through the corridors of the Metropolitan Museum, when listening to the music of Bach or Beethoven, when exercising our freedom to speak, or ... to give, or withhold, our assent, is to fail to recognize how much we have received from the great wellsprings of human talent and concern that gave us Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, our parents, our friends. We need a rebirth of gratitude for those who have cared for us, living and, mostly, dead. The high moments of our way of life are their gifts to us. We must remember them in our thoughts and in our prayers; and in our deeds. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The laws have become so straight-jacketing that presidents and their aides dare not keep journals or diaries, lest they be subpoenaed by avid special prosecutors. — Christopher Buckley

But, Dad! We can't leave. Uncle Jake is hurt!" Daphne said. "Besides, that's Pinocchio. I want to get an autograph. — Michael Buckley

What people fail to appreciate is that the currency of corruption in elective office is, not money, but votes. — James L. Buckley

Lots of times I feel like I don't belong to this place. — Jeff Buckley

I played a nerdy guy on 'CSI: NY' for nine years. I want to be bad for a while. I want to be really, really bad. — A. J. Buckley

Sometimes a man gets carried away when he feels like he should be having his fun and much too blind to see the damage he's done, oh sometimes a man must awake to find that really he has no one. So I'll wait for you and I'll burn will I ever see your sweet return, oh will I ever learn? Oh, Lover you should've come over. Oh love well I'm waiting for you. — Jeff Buckley

Not much ever really comes of commissions, really. The last one that really came up with something truly concrete was the Warren Commission, and for all its good work, most Americans persist in believing that Oswald was working in tandem with the CIA, FBI, Lyndon Johnson, and the John Birch Society. — Christopher Buckley

But how reassuring it was for us, you remember, every now and then ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"), to vibrate to the music of the very heartstrings of the Leader of the Free World who, to qualify convincingly as such, had after all to feel a total commitment to the Free World. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I think people assumed because of my last name that I was a real right-winger. And if you cared to look at my writing, you would be hard pressed to deduce that I'm an ideological right-winger. — Christopher Buckley

To buy very good wine nowadays requires only money. To serve it to your guests is a sign of fatigue. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Music should be like making love. Sometimes you want it soft and tender, another time you want it hard and aggressive. — Jeff Buckley

Why should any country continue, forever, to be "great"? — William F. Buckley Jr.

I hope that, by this point, you're feeling a little less intimidated by the meanies, because I've got some bad news: Meanies come in many forms, not just human. They can be not only animal, but also mineral. In rare cases, they can even be vegetable, but we can talk about William F. Buckley some other time. — June Casagrande

One realization does dawn upon the death of the second parent, namely that you've now moved into the green room to the River Styx. You're next. — Christopher Buckley

There are some writers who sweep us along so strongly in their current of energy--Normal mailer, Tom Wolfe, Toni Morrison, William F. Buckley, Jr., Hunter Thompson, David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers--that we assume that when they go to work the words just flow. Nobody thinks of the effort they made every morning to turn on the switch. You also have to turn on the switch. Nobody is going to do it for you. — William Zinsser

T Bone is genius. The way they've recorded my voice and the instrumentation to these songs is really quite extraordinary. — Betty Buckley

Myself, I'm a post-ideological conservative. — Christopher Buckley

I believe that all men and women will be saved. — Pat Buckley

I am not a political thinker. I'm not even much of a thinker. I'm a hack novelist. — Christopher Buckley

How ironic, she thought, as she fell to her certain death, that at that moment she would have given anything to be a giant goose again. — Michael Buckley

Reagan is both too fatalistic and too modest to be a crudaser. He doesn't have that darkness around the eyes of a George McGovern. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The flowers, the gorgeous, mystic multi-coloured flowers are not the flowers of life, but people, yes people are the true flowers of life, and it has been a most precious pleasure to have temporarily strolled in your garden. — Lord Buckley

It's axiomatic that all husbands are impossible. But I also think it's axiomatic that women are slightly impossible. — Christopher Buckley

Every election, a presidential candidate inevitably proposes a new cabinet agency. The idea is that this is the only way to solve a particular problem. Just create more government. — Christopher Buckley

If one is fooled by magic, then isn't the magic as good as real? — Keith Buckley

William F. Buckley was a man who had a great capacity for fun and for amusing himself by amazing others. — Dick Cavett

I spent, whether consciously or unconsciously, most of my career trying to be something other than William F. Buckley's son. — Christopher Buckley

Daphne, I don't think we're in Ferrypot Landing anymore.
~Sabrina Grimm — Michael Buckley

It is widely known that whenever Senator Johnson feels the urge to act the statesman at the cost of a little political capital," WFB wrote in June 1958, "he lies down until he gets over it. — William F. Buckley Jr.

They embraced and parted. They never saw each other again. — Christopher Buckley

That woman is hiding something!" she said.
"You think everyone's hiding something."
"And you would hug the devil if he gave you cookies. — Michael Buckley

When, on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Jerome had played his parents an ethereal, far more beautiful version of 'Hallelujah' by a kid called Buckley, Kiki had thought yes, that's right, our memories are getting more beautiful and less real every day. And then the kid drowned in the Mississippi, recalled Kiki now, looking up from her knees to the colourful painting that hung behind Carlene's empty chair. Jerome had wept: the tears you cry for someone whom you never met who made something beautiful that you loved. Seventeen years earlier, when Lennon died, Kiki had dragged Howard to Central Park and wept while the crowd sang 'All You Need is Love' and Howard ranted bitterly about Milgram and mass psychosis. — Zadie Smith

I'll let Democrats defend spending our grandchildren broke on entitlements. — Christopher Buckley

Maybe one of the monsters ate him," Daphne whimpered.
"That would be awesome," Puck said.
Sabrina flashed him an angry look.
"Awesome in a terrible, heartbreakingly tragic way," Puck continued. — Michael Buckley

The Beatles are not merely awful. I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I was an only child who had every advantage, every blessing, absolutely. — Christopher Buckley

The obvious differences apart, Karl Marx was no more a reliable prophet than was the Reverend Jim Jones. Karl Marx was a genius, an uncannily resourceful manipulator of world history who shoved everything he knew, thought, and devised into a Ouija board from whose movements he decocted universal laws. He had his following, during the late phases of the Industrial Revolution. But he was discredited by historical experience longer ago than the Wizard of Oz: and still, great grown people sit around, declare themselves to be Marxists, and make excuses for Gulag and Afghanistan. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I do not, in short, myself believe it is in the least bit undignified to confess to having been critically influenced in one's thinking by a teacher, or a faculty, or a book; but the accent these days is so strong on atomistic intellectual independence that to suggest such a thing is, as I have noted, highly inflammatory. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I love Washington. I have an affection for the place. For a satirist, I think it's sort of Disneyland. I mean, you know, there's always some inspiration in the morning's headlines. — Christopher Buckley

The Smiths hasn't been equaled. That goes for the composition of the songs, the lyrics, and the performance. — Jeff Buckley

Norman Mailer decocts matters of the first philosophical magnitude from an examination of his own ordure, and I am not talking about his books. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Everything I do and say and the way I do and say it annoys me. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I'm lying in my bed, blanket is warm, this body will never keep me safe from harm. I still feel your hair, black ribbons of coal. Touch my skin to keep me whole. If only you'd come back to me. To feel you at my side, wouldn't need no Mojo Pin to keep me satisfied. — Jeff Buckley

You cannot paint the Mona Lisa by assigning one dab each to a thousand painters. — William F. Buckley Jr.

George H. W. Bush may be a World War II hero and New England Yankee blue blood, but he has the tear ducts of a Sicilian grandmother. — Christopher Buckley

The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I grew up, as reported, in a large family of Catholics without even a decent ration of tentativeness among the lot of us about our religious faith. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Puck turned to Sabrina. "What is she doing down there?"
Hiding, I guess."
Puck leaned down and poked his head under the seat. "I found you."
Ms. Smirt shrieked.
Puck lifted himself up to his full height and laughed. "She's fun."
He leaned back down and she screamed again. "I could do this all day. Can I keep her? — Michael Buckley

Dr. King's flouting of the law does not justify the flouting by others of the law, but it is a terrifying thought that, most likely, the cretin who leveled his rifle on the head of Martin Luther King, may have absorbed the talk, so freely available, about the supremacy of the individual conscience, such talk as Martin Luther King, God rest his soul, had so widely, and so indiscriminately, made. — William F. Buckley Jr.

So this fairy tale is a horror story — Michael Buckley

I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it and one is the feeling that I haven't just been sitting on my ass all afternoon. — William F. Buckley Jr.

They [progressives] are men and women who tend to believe that the human being is perfectible and social progress predictable, and that the instrument for effecting the two is reason; that truths are transitory and empirically determined; that equality is desirable and attainable through the action of state power; that social and individual differences, if they are not rational, are objectionable, and should be scientifically eliminated; that all people and societies strive to organize themselves upon a rationalist and scientific paradigm. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I would like to take you seriously but to do so would affront your intelligence. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Lindsey took my father's hand and watched his face for movement. My sister was growing up before my eyes. I listened as she whispered the words he had sung to the two of us before Buckley was born:

Stones and bones;
snow and frost
seeds and beansand polliwogs.
Paths and twigs, assorted kisses,
We all who knowwho Daddy misses!
His two little frogs of girls, that's who.
They know where they are, do you, do you?


When her eyes closed and they both slept silently together, I whispered to them:
Stones and bones;
snow and frost;
seeds and beans and polliwogs.
Paths and twigs, assorted kisses,
We all know who Susie misses..... — Alice Sebold

That tank," Bucktooth pointed at the gas gauge on the dashboard of the decidedly unfredneck-like '65 Dodge Dart, "is almost empty. We ain't going much farther."
"Indeed it is." A solemn Phosphate agreed. "I suggest we stop the car and weigh our options."
"What options?" Professor Buckley asked. "Why do-that is- we've been traveling up and down this path for over an hour without seeing anyone or encountering anything. Even the doughnut shop cannot be relocated. In light of this, what options do we have?"
It was difficult to argue with the ex-history teacher's typically alarmist position. Brisbane's reliable old automobile had indeed been expending its remaining fuel supply in what seemed to be a hopeless effort to exit the unnamed dirt path. After leaving the doughnut shop and the blonde presidential descendant who worked there, they'd been unable to find DeMohrenschildt Lane again, or any other side street. — Donald Jeffries

A Buddhist or a good atheist is as acceptable to God as a good Catholic. — Pat Buckley

I feel like a movie star," Daphne said as the girls hurried downstairs. "You look like a mental patient," Sabrina remarked. — Michael Buckley

I remember having friends in high school that did the theater department stuff, and I always wanted to try it but never had the guts to. I was the class clown but could never really build up the courage to try it. I took one acting class and really enjoyed it. — Robert Buckley

Nothing raises the national temperature more than a VACANCY sign hanging from the colonnaded front of the Supreme Court. — Christopher Buckley

I ate her cooking for eighteen years," he whispered. "You get used to it."
"Oh yeah, when?"
"I think it happened around the seventeenth year," Henry said. — Michael Buckley

I'm pretty lucky to work on both 'CSI: NY' and 'Supernatural.' Not bad gigs! — A. J. Buckley

I prefer rock music - my favorites are R.E.M. and Matthew Sweet - but I think that if Dr. Buckley played Matthew Sweet, some of her patients would not like it. Matthew Sweet has a song called "Sick of Myself," and I am pretty sure that is exactly the wrong song name for a therapist's waiting room. — Craig Lancaster

Now you get off that Pegasus and come down here and start acting your age!"
"Honey, he's four thousand years old," Veronica said. — Michael Buckley

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Raising her hand and shaking the handcuffs, the shaking Pucks arm as well.
"Unfortunately, it is necessary," Puck explained. "You don't want to work with by security staff so from now on I'm going to be your personal bodyguard. Going to be with you every second of the day. — Michael Buckley

One must recently have lived on or close to a college campus to have a vivid intimation of what has happened. It is there that we see how a number of energetic social innovators, plugging their grand designs, succeeded over the years in capturing the liberal intellectual imagination. And since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to run things. Run just about everything. There never was an age of conformity quite like this one, or a camaraderie quite like the Liberals'. — William F. Buckley Jr.

You know, I've spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks. — William F. Buckley Jr.

If I were to win the Nobel Prize in Literature - which I think it's fairly safe to say is not going to happen - I would still expect the headline on my obituary to read: 'Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, Jr., is dead at 78.' — Christopher Buckley

As a consequence, the Court ruled that the limits on campaign spending violated the First Amendment, but it accepted the $1,000 limit on individual contributions on the ground that the need to avoid the appearance of corruption justified this limited constraint on speech. — James L. Buckley

I'm convinced I got signed because of who I am. And it makes me sad. — Jeff Buckley

Words are beautiful but restricted. They're very masculine, with a compact frame. But voice is over the dark, the place where there's nothing to hang on: it comes from a part of yourself that simply knows, expresses itself, and is. — Jeff Buckley

Life might be stranger than fiction, but fiction allows many writers to more accurately portray life to their readers. — Jaime Buckley

The traces to the East haven been broken, the Republican party will never again be dominated by the editorial writers for the New York Herald Tribune. Free at last. — William F. Buckley Jr.

One day, Buckley came home from the second grade with a story he'd written: Once upon a time there was a kid named Billy. He liked to explore. He saw a hole and went inside but he never came out. The End. — Alice Sebold

Look, I know you think I have a coke problem but I do not. I can quit any time I run out. — Keith Buckley

They [Theodore White and Lou Harris] took turns weeping, and finally concluded that Rockefeller got the votes of everyone in California who is a Negro, a Jew, a Mexican, and a college graduate, while Goldwater got the votes of every millionaire. Which certainly makes California the land of opportunity. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Trickster, love will be the end of you. — Michael Buckley

There is a man who has won the decathlon of human existence."* — William F. Buckley Jr.

It's not whether your glass is empty or full, it's what you do with it that really matters. — Sue Nelson Buckley

Conservatism aims to maintain in working order the loyalties of the community to perceived truths and also to those truths which in their judgment have earned universal recognition. — William F. Buckley Jr.

There is no greater paradox in the cosmos," the deceased had written, "than the apparent contradiction of our helplessness ('without me, you can do nothing') alongside God's 'helplessness.' Oh, I know, God is all-powerful, and so on; but he cannot undo what he has done, and what he once did was to make men free. This means that he 'needs' us in order to get us to Heaven as his lovers, and in order to do his will in the world. All we have to do in order to frustrate those wishes - to render God 'helpless' - is to say No. But God is not helpless, really, because he has mercy - himself. And what mercy does is convert, change our hearts. Which God never stops trying to do until we are dead. This means continued suffering for him, which is what Christ is all about." Young — William F. Buckley Jr.

If I could bottle this exact feeling I have right now, and sell it, I'd make millions." I said to Chet
"Well, unfortunately for you, but luckily for every other adult, someone already has. They called it alcohol. — Keith Buckley

Your wig steers the gig. — Lord Buckley

From Time for College - Mr. Chiardi & Other Stories

It was time for Junior to go to college. He'd sprouted pubic hair and was eyeing all the girls.
"I want to go to college," he said.
"Yes," I replied, "It's time."
His mother, my wife, was resigned to the fact that it was time for Junior to leave the nest. She sat on a stool at the granite kitchen counter, spiked coffee beside her, reading The New York Times. She looked almost real. — Rita Buckley Aka Charles Maxwell

I think I would really lay down and die. Music comes from a very primal, twisted place. When a person sings, their body, their mouth, their eyes, their words, their voice says all these unspeakable things that you really can't explain but that mean something anyway. People are completely transformed when they sing; people look like that when they sing or when they make love. But it's a weird thing - at the end of the night I feel strange, because I feel I've told everybody all my secrets. — Jeff Buckley

I resent the fact that a parental warning sticker has to be included on an album as cover art. To me that's censorship. — Jeff Buckley

I wish I could have performed with Jeff Buckley, but I missed my chance. — Sydney Wayser

I find it easier to believe in God than to believe Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I know what I'm doing," he growled.
"If you knew what you were doing, we wouldn't have two million zombie bunnies chasing us!" she shouted.
"Guys," Daphne said, trying to get their attention, but her sister was too angry to listen.
"How was I supposed to know that kid was mentally unhinged?" Puck said.
"I don't know," Sabrina snapped. "Maybe when we found him running from a dead body?"
"Guys!" Daphne shouted.
"What!" Puck and Sabrina snapped.
"LOOK OUT! — Michael Buckley

There are times in our lives when we labor so hard, for so long, that it may feel that we have nothing to show for it. That we have failed. We get discouraged, because we don't achieve what we yearned for or anticipated.
But a lack of desired results doesn't mean we failed ... it means we have locked our sights on the end result, instead of focusing on the process itself.
No one can guarantee your success.
What you can do, however, is consistently act - progressing towards your goals, so that your chances of success grows exponentially with each step you take. — Jaime Buckley

I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and Liberals at bay. And the nation free. — William F. Buckley Jr.

It's called a repository spell. Makes something bigger on the inside than on the outside. Works great for bags, barrels, hats, just about anything really, even a 1963 police box. — Chuck

It's just a little ranch. Thirty-five acres. In Texas, if it's not a thousand acres, it's considered a ranchette. — Betty Buckley

The real threat, as seen by the ACLU, is that religious behavior might give secular behavior a bad name, and that is, surely, unconstitutional. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The kind of corruption the media talk about, the kind the Supreme Court was concerned about, involves the putative sale of votes in exchange for campaign contributions. — James L. Buckley