on writer's block

"Wet sand is the color of good heroin."
- A deceased veteran of current wars

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”

- Albert Einstein

on stand-up comedy

"You pray that they like you."
- Woody Allen

Image source here.

routine

"I write seven days per week, even if it's only one or two hours per day; writing is a way of living."
- Mario Vargas Losa

Image source here.

"Failure is the road to being a great comic."
- Louis C.K.

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
- Mark Twain

"Simple is the most sophisticated thing of all."
- Ina Garten

Image source here.

wild and crazy guy

"My idea of a good night out is to stay at home."
- Steve Martin

Kvell: (Yiddish) To delight especially in the fortune of others.

Schadenfreude: (German) To delight in the misfortune of others.

"There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Image source here.

hogtown

"Toronto is not a good looking city."
- Anthony Bourdain

Image source here.

Wildcats

"The best players I've coached thought that they weren't good enough."
- University of Kentucky head basketball coach John Calipari

on war

"The comparison is hardly fair to hell."

Courage is the most important virtue because it enables all the others.
- Aristotle paraphrased

Image source here.

"If you compressed the atmosphere down to the density of water it'd be 30 feet deep."
- Ken Caldeira, Stanford University

routine

"I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say."
- Flannery O'Connor

Image source here.

down & out in Las Vegas

"This is great, but you can't eat the scenery."
- Literal starving artist J.D. Fortune

Image source here.

etiquette

"Even if it's 'no', always respond."
- Deputy White House Chief of Staff Alyssa Mastromonaco

Image source here.

action painter

"Sometimes the long-shots pay-off the biggest."
- Vince Vaughn in "The Internship"

on strategy

"Retreat and attack in another direction."
- Ronnie Hawkins

Image source here.

bird brain

Crows are smarter than dogs. Extraordinary problem solving skills. On par with chimps even though their brains are a fraction of the size. They make tools. They learn from each other.

Story here.

Image source here.

sleep

"The biggest mistakes I made were when I was tired."
- Bill Clinton

'The toes you step on today are connected to the behinds you'll have to kiss on the way down.'
- Quincy Jones as related by Stewart Copeland

Image source here.

"I am a man more sinned against than sinning."

- King Lear

Image source here.

be not too radical

"Near the end of his life Walt Whitman advised Horace Traubel to 'be radical-be radical-be not too damned radical!' As early as 1930 Vernon Parrington's Main Currents in American Thought identified this remark as a key to Whitman's character and outlook."

- Source here.

on success

"It's not all about you. I can't all be about you."
- Pharrell Williams

prostitution

"If you're going to be a hooker, at least charge a lot."
- Michael Caine