Roy Blount, Jr. Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

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.

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

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

Roy Blount, Jr.
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.

Roy Blount, Jr.
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.

Roy Blount, Jr.
Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo Clinic.

Roy Blount, Jr.
I have to be firm on this: unique is not to be modified. Adding very or absolutely is like putting a propeller on a rabbit to make him hop better. It won't work, and he won't be a rabbit anymore.

Roy Blount, Jr.
I do hope you realize that every time you use disinterested to mean uninterested, an angel dies.

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

Roy Blount, Jr.
Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky.

Roy Blount, Jr.
I know, you want to make a citizen's arrest of anyone whose menu lists "Idaho potato baked in it's skin," but you can't.

Roy Blount, Jr.
A convention has to be something that more than one person is moved to take hold of. It's a convention to call your sweetheart "dumplin" or "honeybun." It would also be a convention to call her "gulag," if she would stand for it, which she won't, and why would you want to be around someone who would?

Roy Blount, Jr.
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.

Roy Blount, Jr.
That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp.

Roy Blount, Jr.
Perhaps the truth is that heavy literature blooms in extremes of temperature.

Roy Blount, Jr.
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.

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

Roy Blount, Jr.
To a woman, having flowers sent to her is thoughtful. To a man, sending flowers is a way of being thoughtful without putting any thought in to it. It's like foreign aid.

Roy Blount, Jr.