They fulfilled to the uttermost all that the world demands of poor people. The father fetched breakfast for the small clerks in the bank; the mother devoted her energy to making underwear for strangers; the sister trotted to and fro behind the counter at the behest of customers.
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, 1915
One thing I have learned is that operational experience serves as a bulwark against overreaching academic theory.
Grim Assessment by John Robb, 2005 August 23
I’m sure that countless dissertations remain to be written about Murakami’s obsessions with cats, jazz music, and shapely earlobes—fun enough the first time around, but irritating as they recur.
Gods of the Mall by Christian Caryl in The New York Review of Books, 2007 March 1
There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest; and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe in Poetry and Tales from the Library of America, 1984
I deeply believe in the need to study The Challenges of Complex IT Projects. I think the sponsoring organizations showed a disappointing tendency to base their work on demonstrably faulty premises. But I think their conclusions, if implemented, are likely to do more good than harm.
Looking into the Challenges of Complex IT Projects by Robert Glass in Communications of the ACM, November, 2006
This is a broad generalization, which means that it’s open to contradiction by a great many facts while still, I think, remaining true.
Lonely Days, Lonely Nights by Jonah Goldberg in National Review Online, 2005 September 14
Do not permit important activities to be implemented by a single individual without appropriate peer interaction; peers working together are the first and best line of defense against errors.
Section 3.1.2, Project Implementation Recommendations by JPL Special Review Board in Report on the Loss of the Mars Polar Lander and Deep Space 2 Missions, 2000 March 22
Yet since practicing my profession and seeing my theories come to life, I am filled with a sense of sadness such as may come over a general who finds himself obliged to descend from the heights of strategy to the plains of tactics.
The Thrower-Away by Heinrich Böll in 18 Stories, 1971
The buses in those days looked like PF Flyers sneakers. Canvas low-tops. They jogged from stop to stop and smelled bad and the people riding them were like big toes crammed together in the sweaty dark.
Bakersfield by Charles D’Ambrosio in Tin House, 2006 Fall
He said that being fired was for the best. He shuddered. He was turning into the typical American, convinced that when doors slammed shut, magical ones opened that guaranteed an ever brighter future.
The Love Life of an Assistant Animator by Katherine Vaz in Glimmer Train Stories, 2005 Fall
First marketing guy: Why is that an important question?
Second marketing guy: We’re writing a FAQ, and that’s going to be the first question.
Coupla marketing guys sittin’ around talkin’, overheard 2006 December 6
“People get old and they can’t improve things,” he says, “so they lie all the time.”
Imagined Scenes by Ann Beattie in Distortions, 1979
The point being that since game theory in general provides the analyst with so many opportunities to twist himself repeatedly up his own arse like a berserk Klein bottle, if a given real-world course of action appears to have nothing going for it other than a game-theoretic or strategic justification, it’s almost certainly a bad idea.
Reputations are made of… by Daniel Davies in Crooked Timber, 2006 November 29
Eight months after the Paris flight, a New York editor wired a reporter who was covering Lindbergh on a good-will tour through Latin America: “No more unless he crashes.”
The Lindbergh Legends by John Lardner in The Aspirin Age, 1949
Colbert: Are there monkeys as smart as you?
Agre: I’m sure there are quite a few, quite a few.
Colbert: Oh really? Do they give a Nobel prize for thowing your own feces?
Agre: That’s the Economics prize, I think.
Steven Colbert interviewing Peter Agre on The Colbert Report, 2006 October 19
“The exercise of pure logic,” he began, “is often comparable to working out immense sums in arithmetic and finding at the end that we have somewhere forgotten to carry one or multiply by two. Every one of a thousand figures and factors may be correct except that one; but the difference in the answer to the sum may be disconcerting. Therefore I do not put this forward as pure logic.”
The Crooked Hinge by John Dickson Carr, 1938
He was also frightened of invertebrates, marine life in general, temperatures below freezing, fat people, people of other races, race-mixing, slums, percussion instruments, caves, cellars, old age, great expanses of time, monumental architecture, non-Euclidean geometry, deserts, oceans, rats, dogs, the New England countryside, New York City, fungi and molds, viscous substances, medical experiments, dreams, brittle textures, gelatinous textures, the color gray, plant life of diverse sorts, memory lapses, old books, heredity, mists, gases, whistling, whispering—the things that did not frighten him would probably make a shorter list. He evidently took pleasure in his fears
The Heroic Nerd by Luc Sante in The New York Review of Books, 2006 October 19
Data simply occurs to me.
Ask Dr. Science by Dr. Science, in Funny Times, 2005 December
Monkey 1: I heard Tom Wolfe is speaking at Lincoln Center.
Monkey 2: (sign language)
Monkey 1: Well of course we’re going to throw poo at him!
Madagascar, 2005
Of course, my existing device may be perfectly OK, and I could go another five or six years before a low battery causes that bulge in my chest to start beeping, telling me that it’s time for a replacement.
A problem close to my heart by Duncan Graham-Rowe in New Scientist, 2005 December 10
