Roy Blount, Jr. Quotes

If a cat spoke, it would say things like Hey, I don't see the problem here.

Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo Clinic.

A dog will make eye contact. A cat will, too, but a cat

The last time somebody said, 'I find I can write much better with a word processor.', I replied, 'They used to say the same thing about drugs.'

Ham's substantial, ham is fat. Ham is firm and sound. Ham's what God was getting at When He made pigs so round.

Two young Harvard M.B.A.'s worked up some highly optimistic projections -- with the caveat that these were speculative and should of course be tested.

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.

Going to Vanderbilt did a lot of things for me, and one of the things it cured me of was the need to follow college football.

Mozart combined high formality and playfulness that delights as no other composition in any other medium does.

Obama's the most thoughtful-sounding president I can remember.

He seems to be saying what he wants to say, and that is a great relief. He always sounds like he's thinking about what he's saying while he's saying it, and that's a rare thing in politicians.

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.

People don't necessarily want or need to be done unto as you would have them do unto you. They want to be done unto as they want to be done unto.

Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs.

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.

Obama's got a great sense of humor, but mainly he has a great thinking presence, which is uncommon. It's hard to imagine being able to do, think over answers and deliver them on television. If I were president I would constantly be spluttering.

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.

I've never thought it was necessary to make fun of people - you can find fun in people without necessarily mocking them.

Anyone who undertakes the literary grind had better like playing around with words.

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.

I am open to the accusation that I see compost as an end it itself.

But we do grow some real red damn tomatoes such as you can't get in the stores. And potatoes, beans, lettuce, collards, onions, squash, cauliflower, eggplant, carrots, peppers. Dirt in you own backyard, producing things you eat. Makes you wonder.

An author is a person who can never take innocent pleasure in visiting a bookstore again.

Pete Rose is too rich a character to fit on a bronze plaque.

He requires a good, trenchant, poignant (ah, Petey) book, and this is it.

The legendary yet factual Curtis Wilkie has been the right man in the right place at an uncanny number of extraordinary times.

I like weeding, but I tend to think of it as a solitary activity.

Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ.

Think about scary movies: There's a fine line between horror and humor.

When money gets too far away from actual, physical, real equity and property it gets too abstract and too distantly derived and then suddenly it's not worth anything anymore. And the same is true of language.

It's my belief that sanity lies in realizing that reality is not exactly what we had in mind.

A good heavy book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic.

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.

New York walking isn't exercise: it's a continually showing make-your-own movie.

I prefer my oysters fried; that way I know my oysters died.

In the beginning, Atlanta was without form, and void; and it still is.

I just think lots of words have physicality.

How about the word 'wobble?' You think that's arbitrary? When you say the word 'wince,' you wince. How about that?

Perhaps the truth is that heavy literature blooms in extremes of temperature.

That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp.

It was easy to make fun of Bush, but it was sort of like shooting fish in a barrel and it didn't really feel all that good because it was so easy to do. I would much rather live under a thoughtful president. Even if it makes it harder to be funny about politics, it makes it more interesting to be funny about politics.

A picture's worth a thousand words? A library card's worth millions.

To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation.

I don't remember what I was like before I learned my ABC's, but for as long as I can remember I have made them with my fingers and felt them in my bones.

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.

I think what's really hard is making sense and making what you write clear and smooth-flowing.

Usage ain't always a matter of ought.

I do some eccentric dancing.

The first time I walked into a library, I got so excited I almost wet my pants.

I do not Twitter. I don't want to Twitter, and I don't see any point in Twittering. The last thing I want to do is tell people what I'm doing at the moment because I'm probably not doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

Certainly people have said a lot of deeply unfortunate and stupid things in Southern accents, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the accent itself.

Twitter. It's not a good sound, is it? If it were worth doing, there would be a better word for it.

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.

The local groceries are all out of broccoli, loccoli.

Any given generation gives the next generation advice that the given generation should have been given by the previous generation but now it's too late.