Obscure Reference Quotes & Sayings

For what is more lovable than failure? — Mervyn Peake

The character truest to itself becomes eccentric rather than immovably centered, as Emerson defined the noble character of the hero. At the edge, the certainty of borders gives way. We are more subject to invasions, less able to mobilize defenses, less sure of who we really are, even as we may be perceived by others as a person of character. The dislocation of self from center to indefinite edge merges us more with the world, so that we can feel blest by everything. — James Hillman

I may have been dead for the past hundred and fifty years, Susannah, ... but that doesn't mean I don't know how people say good night. And generally, when people say good night, they keep their tongues to themselves. — Meg Cabot

It is the mysterious touch of the ideal that animates and sustains the real, and through it alone we can discover and affirm the ideal. — Muhammad Iqbal

Look at me, see how I resemble a puddle of dog vomit? Won't you please throw your fingers to your teeth and be wildly fascinated by me? — Ted Dekker

It wasn't that she believed in voodoo, precisely - but she believed in the people who believed in voodoo - and that was scary enough.

-Coralee Ayers — Caitlin Rush

The chicken's still dancing
the chicken won't stop — Sarah Kane

As much as it was like anything, magic was like a language. And like a language, textbooks and teachers treated it as an orderly system for the purposes of teaching it, but in reality it was complex and chaotic and organic. It obeyed rules only to the extent that it felt like it, and there were almost as many special cases and one-time variations as there were rules. These Exceptions were indicated by rows of asterisks and daggers and other more obscure typographical fauna which invited the reader to peruse the many footnotes that cluttered up the margins of magical reference books like Talmudic commentary. — Lev Grossman

Now I believe that people need to understand what's happening in my campaign, and they're going to get three or four snapshots of that, with plenty of time before the first disclosure happens in June. — Craig Benson

A lot of that, "Have you ever noticed that [specific Florida player] is like the [dated cultural reference] version of [obscure player from the middle 1980s] except that his [some ridiculous stoner concept about grizzly bears] has been filtered through the political ideology of [random indie artist currently on tour with Built to Spill]?" We all have to pay the rent, rockers. I know who I am. — Chuck Klosterman

Sixty-five months into Bush's presidency, conservatives feel betrayed The main cause of conservatives' anger with Bush is this: He talked like a conservative to win our votes but never governed like a conservative. — Richard Viguerie

the Pednosophers who, by one name or another, actually did exist in late 16th century London. It numbered among its members Marlowe and Raleigh. ('Its president is in the Azores,' says Cotton, of Raleigh. And so he was.) Probably only one reader in a million will detect this obscure reference. I pray it's the reviewer for The New York Times. — John Yeoman

I always have directors who are somewhat frustrated because they'll reference a beautifully obscure film from the '50s or '60s or '70s, and I've not seen it. — Amy Adams

Everybody uses pop culture as a shorthand. You might make an obscure reference to Monty Python or Iron Eagle that only some people will get, but if they do it conveys a world of meaning. — Ernest Cline

People like to think that actors are terribly worried about ghosts of other actors in the parts they play. But you just have to get on with it. — Matthew Macfadyen

Language, identity, place, home: these are all of a piece - just different elements of belonging and not-belonging. — Jhumpa Lahiri