I don't buy it

" ... (a high school coach) told me that the people you get to know (in university) will dictate the rest of your life - the contacts you make at this stage in your life will be your contacts for life. I bought that."
- Jack Cowin, Chancellor, University of Western Ontario , p. 32 Alumni Gazette

shadow and form

Edward Hopper's "House by the Railroad" inspired the Bates' house in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho."

advertising truism

"We don't have any money, so now we have to think."
- Unattributed

Inherent Vice

The object contains the seeds of its own destruction, as in metallic based quilt dyes.

“I remember sitting with George Lucas ... and we were full of dreams,” said Coppola. “We talked about the amount of money we would want to have someday—enough to have a Ferrari and have everything, but not so much that people would hate you and kidnap your kids—a lot but not too much. We decided it was $20 million. Now George has $6 billion.”
- Francis Ford Coppola here.

on disco

"You have to dance."
- Mick Jagger

football

About 100 million people watch the Super Bowl in America versus 300 million Europeans who watch the European football championship. 

jazz spirit

"If you don't improvise, you disappear very quickly."
- Sir Richard Branson

Can a negative be proven?

"You Can Prove a Negative. It is widely believed that you can't prove a negative. Some people even think that it is a law of logic—you can't prove that Santa Claus, unicorns, the Loch Ness Monster, God, pink elephants, WMD in Iraq and Bigfoot don't exist. This widespread belief is flatly, 100% wrong."
- Source: Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania here.

The Loch Ness Monster does not exist because it's claimed water home is a glacial lake only ten thousand years old.

arsenic and mercury

John Dryden, 1856

Robert Howlett succumbed to the hazards of early photography at the age of 27.

Ch-Check It Out

An earlier reference to Neil deGrasse Tyson here.

on pain

[Lawrence has just extinguished a match between his thumb and forefinger. William Potter surreptitiously attempts the same.]

William Potter: Ooh! It damn well 'urts!

T.E. Lawrence: Certainly it hurts.

Officer: What's the trick then?

T.E. Lawrence: The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.

bronze bull

Isidore-Jules Bonheur
Standing Angus Bull, model second half 19th century

Image source here.

An earlier Bull reference here.

a chef's life

"Your Friday and Saturday pay for your week. You never know what you're gonna get Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday."
- Ben Knight, restauranteur 

Bill Gates discusses music

Here.

among the first outdoor painters

Eugène Boudin, Women on the Beach at Berck, 1881

"Everything that is painted directly and on the spot has always a strength, a power, a vivacity of touch which one cannot recover in the studio ... three strokes of a brush in front of nature are worth more than two days of work at the easel."

Image source here.

the best chef in the world commits suicide

Story here.

Home of the Pope

Châteauneuf-du-Pape

"The essence of cool, after all, is not giving a fuck."
- Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw, p. 119

What to do when ...

... you're staying at Robert De Niro's NYC hotel here. 

armageddon recipe

Jamie Oliver's biggest global concerns:

1. Obesity;
2. Antibiotic resistance;
3. Lack of water.

If we can't rebalance, Oliver concludes, it'll lead to war, famine.

5

Charles Haley is the only player in NFL history to win five Super Bowls.

political axiom

"You've got to govern with what you have, not with what you want."
- Unattributed

Me fail english? That's unpossible!

"You can be a great writer without necessarily using words very well."
- Mike Nichols on Eugene O'Neill

role

"The job of the director is to turn psychology into behaviour."
- Elia Kazan

reputed to be the best ever

"Acting is lying for a living ... I don't want my lie to be disbelieved."
- Marlon Brando

"his torch enlightened all of mankind"

'

"Things came to (Voltaire) dull and he made them radiant; things came to him obscure, and he cleansed and scoured them with clarity; things came to him in useless scholastic dress, and he clothed them in such language that the whole world could understand and profit from them. Never did one man teach so many, or with such irresistible artistry."
- Will Durant (posthumously, 2002)

The unheard story of the Sistine Chapel

If the video doesn't play, access it directly from TED here.

satipatthana

"... one does not covet more than one's small lot, one is free of animosity, and one lives in the immediate present, day to day, without dread of what might befall."
- Garrison Keillor describing his cheerful Minnesota upbringing in TheKeillor Reader, p.357

Scottish vernacular

doobie A mild term of abuse meaning an idiot: "Whit d'ye dae that fur, ya doobie?"

Two hundred pages of how Glaswegians speak in Michael Munro's, The Complete Patter, (1996)