Roy Blount, Jr. - Alphabet juice (2008)

9 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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.
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.