"He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."
- Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

"'Robbe', what do you call a man who has a pistol and no college degree?'
'A shit with a pistol.'
'Good. What do you call a man with a college degree but no pistol?'
'A shit with a degree.'
'Good. What do you call a man with a degree and a pistol?'
'A man, papa!'
'Bravo, Robertino!'"
- Roberto Saviano, Gomorrah

"My fourth-grade teacher told our class that we should never hitchhike, because the only people who picked up hitchhikers were perverted serial killers. This advice was complicated by what my fifth-grade teacher told us the following year; she said that we would all have driver's licenses in a few years, and the one rule we always needed to remember was never to pick up hitchhikers. This was because all hitchhikers were serial killers. According to what I learned in public school, every person on every freeway was trolling for destruction. I used to imagine nomadic, sadistic drifters thumbing rides with bloodthirsty Volkswagen owners, both desperately waiting for the first opportunity to kill each other. Hitchhiking seemed like an ultraviolent race against time."
- Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

"This being the case, it's clear that Luke Skywalker was the original Gen Xer. For one thing, he was incessantly whiny. For another, he was exhaustively educated - via Yoda - about things that had little practical value (i.e., how to stand on one's head while lifting a rock telekinetically). Essentially, Luke went to the University of Dagobah with a major in Buddhist philosophy and a minor in physical education. There's not a lot of career opportunities for that kind of schooling; that's probably why he dropped out in the middle of the semester."
- Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

"The fact of the matter is that everyone who truly cares about basketball subconsciously knows that Celtics vs. Lakers reflects every fabric of male existence, just as everyone who loves rock'n'roll knows that the difference between the Beatles and the Stones is not so much a dispute over music as it is a way to describe your own self-identity. This is why men need to become obsessed with things: It's an extroverted way to pursue solipsism. We are able to study something that defines who we are; therefore, we are able to study ourselves."
- Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

"It appears that countless women born between the years of 1965 and 1978 are in love with John Cusack. I cannot fathom how he isn't the number-one box-office star in America, because every straight girl I know would sell her soul to share a milkshake with that motherfucker."
- Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

"Eventually, the bus appeared on the distant horizon, and one of the women, with the relief and disbelief that often accompanies the arrival of public transport said, 'Oh look, the bus is coming.' The other woman - a wise woman, seemingly aware that her words and attitude were potent and poetic enough to form the final sentence in a stranger's book - paused, then said, 'The bus was always coming.'

The End"
- Russell Brand, My Booky Wook

"Bill Clinton came into office wanting to do everything, but he chose to do everything one thing at a time. His opponents realized that if they could jam him on the early stuff - health care, certainly, but before that, gays in the military - they could gum up his whole agenda until he began to trip over his own dick, figuratively and otherwise."
- Charles P. Pierce, "Barack Obama, Madman." Esquire, July 2009