All right. I have the microphone out, and I’m set to record so I figure why not be silly. In the comments below, drop in your favorite quote — historic, fiction, film, radio… you name it. I will record it with either the puppet voice, or the phone sex voice. You can make requests about which, but I make no guarantee to abide by them.
EDITED TO ADD: Thank you all. I’m going to start recording now, so you can stop submitting
FURTHER EDITED TO ADD: I’ve recorded! You can listen and follow along.
“Life is a banquet and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death.”
Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. (Faulkner, Light in August)
“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”
? Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
…I just used this quote in our (elementary) school newsletter. (The character trait of the month is honor.)
Outside ideas of right and wrong there is a field. I will meet you there.
From All’s Well That Ends Well:
“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie which we ascribe to heaven,”
and
“my project may deceive me, but my intents are fixed, and will not leave me.”
“There are few things in this world that can simultaneously delight and dismay in the same manner as a formal dinner party.”
I’ve always had a fondness for that sentence.
from MST3K
“By this time my lungs were aching for air…”
Winston Churchill’s “Finest Hour” speech – in phone sex voice. Okay, or just this part:
Because I’m sure everyone is secretly thinking about what Churchill would be like all sexy.
“If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.””
“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh, people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future [for our children].”
“‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said, ‘to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. Of why the seas are boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings.'”
“Throw yourself off a cliff and build your wings on the way down.”
–Ray Bradbury
Your call on phone sex or puppet voice.
“Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.”
I think this one would work well in either voice.
“The magician stood erect, menacing the attackers with demons, metamorphoses, paralyzing ailments, and secret judo holds. Molly picked up a rock.”
Peter S. Beagle, THE LAST UNICORN
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it… I can resist everything but temptation.”
– Oscar Wilde
“For those who like that sort of thing I should think it just the sort of thing they would like.”
~ Artemus Ward
Paradigms are worth twenty cents.
“Jane looked for the folds which evoked it, and gasped with wonder at their intricacy.”
All the kids from daycare are in dreamland.
The froggie has made his last leap.
Hell no you can’t go to the bathroom.
You know where you can go?
The f**k to sleep
From the Arthur C. Clarke classic, “2001: A Space Odyssey”
HAL 9000: ” I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.”
HAL 9000: “Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.”
HAL 9000: “Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.”
If Mary does that in her phone-sex voice, I’m making it my ringtone.
You called it!
If Mary would be so kind to record different name variations, including an Alex version (or maybe a version where Dave is replaced by a more generic term, like “darling”, “honey”, “moron”, “dummy”), I’d love to use it too as a ringtone.
Pretty please…
Yep, and it is now set as a custom ringtone for Mary’s number!
Luke, I am your father…
Why, then, lead on. O, that a man might know
The end of this day’s business ere it come!
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known. Come, ho! away!
Julius Caesar
“My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.”
(from “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell)
I thought about Donne — I adore Donne — but the vegetable love popped in my head and I’m going with it.
Wow, I came here from Twitter intending to post
“But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.”
I actually bought a poetry collection today specifically so I’d have this poem, although of course many other fine ones are included.
Actually, now I want to hear MRK read the whole thing, in phone sex voice of course.
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/coy.htm
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look up my works, ye mighty, and despair”
Actually that should be “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair”
I think the first one is from the abbreviated version of the poem called the “Tweet of Ozymandius”. I’m sure Percy would have edited wikipedia into meter so that if someone DID look up Ozymandias’ works they would be rewarded duly.
I’m not fancy, how about: “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Alternatively, some of the Lorem Ipsum text would be amusing.
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world, and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan my day.
E.B. White
“You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” –Ray Bradbury
(Who was already represented, but the man said good things about books.)
“Forgive him Theodotus: he is a barbarian and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.” – Caesar and Cleopatra, George Bernard Shaw
From Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense):
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.
—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
Or
I think what you’ll find,
I think what you’ll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.
And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.
—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing
“the current state of knowledge can be summarized thus: In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded.” Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.
-James Nicoll
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again.
it’s either that or my favorite line from Snatch, which I think is probably too profane for either puppets or sexy phone sex voice:
Do you know what “nemesis” means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an ‘orrible cunt… me.
Since I caught a bit of “Willie Wonka and The Chocolate Factory” on TV the other day, I would like to hear the ending of “Pure Imagination”:
“There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination
Living there you’ll be free, if you truly wish to be”
“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.” – Colette
“What do we want?”
“More discursiveness!”
“When do we want it?”
“Well, that’s a very good question.”
“Self realization. I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates who said: ‘I drank WHAT?'”- Chris Knight (Val Kilmer) “Real Genius” (1985).
“What’s happenin’ hot stuff?”- Long Duc Dong (Gedde Watanabe) “Sixteen Candles” (1984)