C Blount Quotes & Sayings

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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

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.

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.