Iwwa Convention Quotes & Sayings

Why has pachinko swept Japan? It can hardly be the excitement of gambling, since the risks and rewards are so small. During the hours spent in front of a pachinko machine, there is an almost total lack of stimulation other than the occasional rush of ball bearings. There is no thought, no movement; you have no control over the flow of balls, apart from holding a little lever which shoots them up to the top of the machine; you sit there enveloped in a cloud of heavy cigarette smoke, semi-dazed by the racket of millions of ball bearings falling through machines around you. Pachinko verges on sensory deprivation. It is the ultimate mental numbing, the final victory of the educational system. - Lost Japan, Eng. vers., 1996 — Alex Kerr

Rarely do they appear great before their valets. — Jean De La Bruyere

There's nothing humane about the flesh of animals who have had one or two or even three improvements made in their singularly rotten lives on today's factory farms. — Ingrid Newkirk

As men advance in life, all passions resolve themselves into money. Love, ambition, even poetry, end in this. — Benjamin Disraeli

This was uncalled for. — Dave Eggers

A garden is a symbol of man's arrogance, perverting nature to human ends ... — Tim Smit

We don't really understand something until we have forgotten it. — Nancy Willard

Collections aren't really planned. I just keep writing short pieces until I have enough for a collection. — Lydia Davis

I love to put on diamonds and beautiful evening gowns and make my girl-friends upset. — Zsa Zsa Gabor

Let's turn inflation over to the post office. That'll slow it down. — Mo Udall

Some people have a fear of rejecting all the security that comes with family, church and state. They become fundamentalists. — Harold Ramis

He punches the steering wheel. And then he breaks. The boy I love breaks. And there's nothing sadder, nothing harder in the world than watching the person you love fall apart right before your eyes - and you can't say or do anything — Jay McLean

This is perhaps the greatest moral challenge Jesus left us: We all do pretty well in love when the persons we are loving are warm and gracious, but can we be gracious and mellow in the face of bitterness, jealousy, hatred, withdrawal? That's the litmus test of love. — Ronald Rolheiser

We all have been given a gift; if you have not sort it out yet, yours is stupidity. — M.F. Moonzajer