Subject: Commonplace Book

From: [email-masked] (Piaw Na)
Date: Mon, 2 May 1994 12:37:41 -0700

Here are my submissions.

Piaw ([email-masked])

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"But it was my integrity that was important.  Was that too much to
ask?  It sells for so little in this world, but it's all we have.  It
is the very last inch of us, but within that inch we are free."
		--- "Valerie," from Alan Moore's "V for Vendetta."
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"If you don't care for vulgarity, you don't care for the truth.  If
you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote.  Send guys to war,
they come back talking dirty."
		--- Tim O'Brien, "The things they carried," 1990.
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"I was a coward.  I went to war."
		--- Tim O'Brien, "The things they carried," 1990.
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"Those who bear for you must often be swept sharply away before you
can bear for yourself..."
		--- Mirth, in "Mage: The Hero Discovered."
		    Matt Wagner.
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"Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality; there are no
dull subjects, only dull minds."
		--- Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder"
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"But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean,
who is neither tarnished nor afraid...  He must be the best man in his
world and a good enough man for any world."
		--- Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder"
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"He is a relatively poor man, ... He is a common man or he would not
go among common people.  He has a sense of character, ... He will take
no man's money dishonestly...  He is a lonely man and his pride is
that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw
him."
		--- Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder"
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"It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes
funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death
should be the coin of what we call civilization."
		--- Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder"
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"`Rabbit's clever,' said Pooh thoughtfully.  `Yes,' said Piglet,
`Rabbit's clever.'  `And he has Brain'  ... There was a long silence.
`I suppose,' said Pooh, `that that's why he never understands
anything.'
		--- A. A. Wilne, "Winnie the Pooh"
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"A lifetime of blows tends to make a person unenthusiastic about any
unnecessary interchange that might lead to more."
		--- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
				    Mainteneance.", 1974
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"Taipei ... A crazy city where Madonna is seducing Confucious in a
death struggle for five thousand years of soul."
		---  Andrew Leonard, Daily Cal.
		(Cal's silly excuse for a college paper)
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Those who boggle at strong language are cowards, because it is real
life which is shocking them, and weaklings like that are the very people
who cause most harm to culture and character.  They would like to see
the nation grow up into a group of over-sensitive little people -
masturbators of false culture of the type of St Aloysius, of whom it is said
in the book of the monk Eustachius that when he heard a man breaking
wind with deafening noise he immediately burst into tears and could
only be consoled by prayers.
   -- Jaroslav Hasek, epilogue to Part I of "The Good Soldier Svejk"
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"All you umpires, back to the bleachers.  Referees, hit the showers.
It's my game.  I pitch.  I hit.  I catch.  I run the bases.  At sunset
I've won or lost.  At sunrise, I'm out again giving it the old try.

And no one can help me.  Not even you."
		--- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Coda, 1979.
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`Aah ... Yes, and how does madam wish to pay?'
 She slapped her credit card on the counter.
`Eventually.'
    - Lady Sharrow, in Iain M. Banks' `Against a Dark Background'
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