Mcclanahan Quotes & Sayings

Memory is an act of meaning-making. It collects the disparate pieces of our lives and distills them. — Rebecca McClanahan

That night I dreamed about flying turtles and forest fires and fucking the earth ... The next morning I awoke and I listened to the tree company tearing away the woods and the timber. I heard the chainsaws ripping outside my open window and I heard the dynamite exploding all the mountain tops away for the black rock below. And instead of feeling sad like I did most mornings, I felt something else now. I found myself saying, 'Explode. Explode you mountains. Rip them down you fuckers. Take this stinking dirt and leave this land with hatred and death. — Scott McClanahan

Effective metaphor does more than shed light on the two things being compared. It actually brings to the mind's eye something that has never before been seen. It's not just the marriage ceremony linking two things; it's the child born from the union. — Rebecca McClanahan

I knew he believed in something that none of us ever do anymore. He believed in the nastiest word in the world. He believed in KINDNESS. Please tell me you remember kindness. Please tell me you remember kindness and joy, you cool motherfuckers. — Scott McClanahan

The matinee audiences are different because they're mostly kids, a great percentage kids. So they respond to everything differently, but I understand what they do respond to. — Rue McClanahan

There was one face that looked like another face before it and then another face that looked like the face before it. This went all the way back until the beginning of time. Who knew what this face would look like a thousand years from now. Me? — Scott McClanahan

I couldn't believe it.
Something wasn't right.
I thought, "Batman smokes cigarettes."
I couldn't believe it. "Batman smokes fucking cigarettes."
I walked away and saw that Batman was just this stupid guy dressed up in a rubber suit, just as afraid as I was, and that I lived in a lost place inside my own heart, where even Batman couldn't help me. — Scott McClanahan

Our show was - it remained - you know, kids could watch it and laugh at it. And they wouldn't know - they wouldn't get the jokes. But they would laugh at it. So they tell me now they have grown up and they're watching it. Now they get the jokes. But we didn't say anything blatant. — Rue McClanahan

I have no interest in being a trained ballerina. People should dance how they want to dance. I want to be the funky chicken. — Scott McClanahan

Of the five senses, smell is the one with the best memory. — Rebecca McClanahan

At last, after almost fifty years in the hopper, the most famous unpublished novel in America is in print. Who Shot the Water Buffalo? is a splendid story of comradeship in a time and place of constant peril, but it's Babbs's irrepressible exuberance and vast, affectionate good humor that make the story go. I love this novel. — Ed McClanahan

They gave me four weeks, and I asked if the first week could be just music with the two main conductors. So, the conductors came over to my home, and we worked in the music room, and I learned my two little songs. — Rue McClanahan

The first clothing line I had was called Very Rue. Then we changed the name and moved to QVC, and the name became A Touch of Rue. — Rue McClanahan

We have one cat. I had eight cats and six dogs in Los Angeles. — Rue McClanahan

Most book things now (with a few exceptions) are just built around nice, safe books written for nice and safe book club readers. These are usually the books you see on display at Barnes and Noble. These Internet writers are like literary terrorists to me. They're training as we speak. They're getting ready to invade. They're building an army. — Scott McClanahan

I walked up to the side of the mountain like I used to do when I was a little boy. I looked out over Rainelle and watched it shine. The coal trucks and the logging trucks were still gunning it through town. They were still clear cutting the mountains and cutting the coal from the ground. Then I heard my mother calling and it was like I was a child again. — Scott McClanahan

Broadway producers are happy to have a big Hollywood name they can post on the marquee, but most of them assume that television and film stars really can't handle stage work. Too often, they're right. — Rue McClanahan

I never look at a painting and ask, "Is this painting fictional or non-fictional?" It's just a painting. — Scott McClanahan

I've been allowed to develop my own character, which I'm still working on. — Rue McClanahan

A writer need not be bound by flat statement like "It was a rough sea," when verbs like tumble and roil and seethe wait to spell from her pen. — Rebecca McClanahan

several ways you could approach the various types of testing we are going to discuss. There are also a number of different pieces of ancillary gear that you may need depending on the approach you choose. I ended up building three key items on a single perf board. Depending on your applications and what equipment you might already have around the shack or workbench, you may want to take a different approach. You could either add more to the "all-in-one" or you could build each component separately. Let's take a look at the test jig: — James McClanahan

We live in a time when the values of courage and honesty, particularly for women writers, equate to confessing only the darkest, most painful parts of our lives. "How brave you are," my students say to each other over workshop tables, "to expose that." Meaning, to uncover this family secret or that heinous act or to openly confront the demons of alcoholism, promiscuity, substance abuse, incest, infidelity, illness, betrayal ... I have also wrestled many dark angels, and continue to do so, so I acknowledge the price such writing exacts. But more and more I have come to respect the honesty and courage required to recognize the bright angels when they appear in our memory, and to allow them equal space in our narratives. — Rebecca McClanahan

Dumbbells are pretty easy to come by, but since many of them are married, I suggest lifting weights. Youth — Rue McClanahan

As far as my part in it is concerned, it began one night in the fall of 1956 in Lexington, Kentucky, when I walked into the Zebra Bar--a musty, murky coal-hole of a place across Short Street from the Drake Hotel (IF YOU DUCK THE DRAKE YOUR A GOOSE!! read the peeling roadside billboard out on the edge of town)--walked in under a marquee that did, sure enough, declare the presence inside of one 'Little Enis,' and came upon this amazing little stud stomping around atop the bar, flailing away at one of those enormous old electric guitars that looked like an Oldsmobile in drag--left-handed! — Ed McClanahan

We stopped doing my clothing line about five years ago, so it isn't available anymore. — Rue McClanahan

Fur used to turn heads, now it turns stomachs. — Rue McClanahan

I didn't know anything about breast cancer when I got it. — Rue McClanahan

That's the best way to do anything--get a bunch of poor people to do it. — Scott McClanahan

To name the world in your own terms, to tell your own story, is an act of authority and power. When you write, you are saying, in effect, 'I have a voice. I have a story. This is what I have to say.' — Rebecca McClanahan

Stories can actually rearrange continents if they're told long enough. — Scott McClanahan

I fall into books the way I fall into lust - wholly, hungrily. — Rebecca McClanahan

Compassion is the foundation of everything positive, everything good. If you carry the power of compassion to the marketplace and the dinner table, you can make your life really count. — Rue McClanahan

I take the longest to get ready of anyone. I've been going in two hours before the show every performance. — Rue McClanahan

Isn't it interesting how the sounds are the same for an awful nightmare and great sex? — Rue McClanahan

Cruelty is one fashion statement we can all do without. — Rue McClanahan

Taken as a whole, the last four administrations represent the culmination of a century of executive abuse. With each successive president from forty-one to forty-four the disease grew worse. By the time Obama leaves office in 2017, Americans will have suffered under twenty-eight consecutive years of unconstitutional executive usurpation of power. An elected king? The British taxpayer spends around $50 million annually to support the entire royal family. With an annual budget that exceeds $1 billion for expenses, including travel, the American president supplanted the British monarch in everything but a title long ago. — Brion McClanahan

Unlike art, the making of home does not stay done. Every morning, every evening, the mess awaits us. The messy, hungry, beautiful world, wanting and needing our touch. — Rebecca McClanahan

I almost fainted. There was no family history. I had been eating a vegetarian diet and I exercised. — Rue McClanahan

The only street I like is Rue Honore de Balzac, because 'Balzac' sound so gay, and I love my gays. I might like Parisians more if they named their streets only for gay icons, like Rue Liza Minnelli or Rue Bette Midler or, my favorite, Rue McClanahan. — Joan Rivers

I felt darkness because i had been deep in the hollers, and i knew glory because i had stood on top of the beautiful mountaintops. more mountaintops please. more mountaintops. — Scott McClanahan

Writing should be like skirts. Long enough to cover what it needs to cover and short enough to maintain interest. — Scott McClanahan