Quotebook
Or: The Mal Award For Quality Phrasemaking
A collection of quotes I have collected since 2021 in a notes app on my phone.
Although most of these quotations were found online, I have not linked to any of the sources. This serves two purposes for me. 1), it means I don't have to go through and find a link for every single quote, and 2) it prevents this page from succumbing to link rot.
Most should be easily findable with the search engine of your choice.
"women are the only future in rock and roll"
- Kurt Cobain's journal, page 110.
"You must be the only person in the world who actually enjoys coming down from speed."- Rupert Smith, speaking to David Hoyle, 2011
"If the borstal was Behan's prep school, Mountjoy Prison was his university. He read Russian novels, corresponded with writers, translated classical Gaelic poetry and made love to men."- Kevin McCloskey, New York Times, 1982.
what we have here, USA 1994 -
the freedom to self-destroy
no freedom to blaze
into complex fulfilment
- 'Revolutionary Letters #95 - for Kurt Cobain' by Diane di Prima
"Midnight and the Lemon Band became a 'where are they now/who were they?' obsession of mine . Took quite a bit of detective work to track them down. They were infinitely robbed. The public will never know"- hollymusic, Guardian comments section, 2016
"The foursome stumbled their way into the opening song, which sounded like dogs being slaughtered inside a big tin drum. It was that good."
- Bill Bentley describes seeing the Sex Pistols in 1978, Austin Chronicle, 2003
"If you took an average Fleet Street newspaper, say the Sunday Times, bloated with self-love, and if you went through it tearing out all the stories which were dishonest or predictable, you’d be left with less than half the paper and if you then tore out all those which were devoid of human interest or meaning, you would end up with a very small newspaper indeed [...]."
- Nick Davies, "The Big Thing About The Big Issue", 1994
I was no Presley
Wrong kind of damaged
- Cathal Coughlan, The Bacon Singer, "Black River Falls", 2000
"We drank champagne and smashed the glasses on the coffin"
- Bronwyn Bowery, The Legend of Leigh Bowery, 2002
"Saw him speak at a bipartialist meeting in Hoxton just two weeks ago. While drinking a clear yet somehow murky liquid from a pint glass, he explained how sad it is that we all "ignore the floor", despite the fact that this is what grounds us. About half way through, he sank to his knees and had to knee-walk around the lectern so we could see him. "Don't ignore the floor" was the basic message. About seven seconds after he had swigged the dregs of his weird pint, he fell over but did not pass out. "If only you were seeing what I am seeing!" he said calmly and clearly. To me and me alone. The other three attendees had left. "is there anything I can do for you?" , conscious that I had told my partner that I was only nipping down the parade for a Diet Coke and a Twix. "I'm good, thanks, bud," he said, much to my relief. In the foyer, I stuck my hands in my hoodie pocket and found the Twix finger I hadn't eaten. Bonus!"
- FirstWorlder, Guardian comments section, "Mark Stewart, Pop Group frontman and revered countercultural musician, dies aged 62", 2023.
"Art has nothing to do with leisure, more to do with work - it is not produced in a leisurely atmosphere"
- Derek Jarman, 1989.
"Shortly after threatening to shoot some of his players – "I mean it, some of them don't deserve to live" – [Jesús] Gil was convicted of fraud and forced to call a halt to his football career."
- "Foul Play - Seven Deadly Sins of Football: Greed - Part Three", the Guardian, 2009
"One time he claimed he’d maintained eye contact with Ronald Regan as he drove past in his motorcade and had attempted to transmit visual hatred."
- Gregory, comments section, "Cuba Dares", Cloudberry Proselytism, 2015
"sleeping in a box at night to keep the dingoes from eating him"
- Frank the Poet - A Convict's Tour of Hell, RTÉ, 2013
"Pearse, she said, was ‘wall-eyed’, not a ladies man, next-door to a spoiled priest."
- Katharine Behan, quoted in "Hold Your Hour" by Maurice Earls, Dublin Review of Books, 2023.
"My God Kathleen, sure they eat their dead out there."
- Stephen Behan on Crumlin, quoted in "Hold Your Hour" by Maurice Earls, Dublin Review of Books, 2023.
[QUOTE EXCISED DUE TO, ON REFLECTION, NOT BEING FUNNY ENOUGH]
"I’ve read it declared a dozen times now that Steven alone is the reason such-and-such took up writing as a trade — all the little fires he started in all these hot little hearts, what’s that come to?"- Mark Sinker, "Steven Wells (1960-2009): Sleep Gently Sweet Foe", Freaky Trigger, 2009.
"I've been lurking this subreddit for a while now (top ten google results for "Rod Dreher divorce.")"- u/trad_aint_all_that, "Rod Dreher Megathread #2", r/brokehugs, reddit, 2022.
"Y'know, some psychiatrist said to me years ago that sanity is only insanity put to good use"
- Sinéad O'Connor (AKA Shuhada' Sadaquat), speaking to Ruby Wax, blackdogtribe.com, 2012.
"Mrs Paton said you would be labelled disgusting if you fed your baby in public in the early 1960s."
- Carolyn Webb, "Australian Breastfeeding Association celebrates 50th anniversary", Sydney Morning Herald, 2014.
"'I like to sit in my study in the evening and have a brandy and report 40 or 50 potholes,' he tells me."
- Mark Morell, speaking to Sirin Kale, "The people making a difference: meet Mr Pothole, the campaigner fixing Britain’s roads", The Guardian, 2022.
"I remember once she was called out to a boiler inspection and when she arrived, found a monkey sitting cross legged at the top of the stairs by the boiler cupboard. It turned out to be an illegally kept pet. The house occupant showed her pictures of it dressed up in an Orange Order sash to celebrate the 12th of July.I still remember peering at her digital camera. There it was, a monkey wearing a white nappy and an orange sash. If this is not the stuff of great literature I don’t know what is."
- Rachel Connolly, "Irish writers are dominating literature. We’re getting the reasons why all wrong", GQ magazine, 2023 (via Mark O'Connell)
"He soon started to show an interest in rock and roll, girls, and horses."- "Lemmy", Wikipedia.org, accessed in 2023
"Our relationship was doomed because I never knew what love was. I'd never been held as a child and it felt strange to be held by a man. Shortly after, I got into drugs. I see Jack occasionally and always regret that it didn't work out.- Uncle Jack Charles speaking to Jane Rocca, Sydney Morning Herald, 2021.
"I'm a survivor of this place. Y'know, this was the second-most vicious Salvation Army home in the State."- Uncle Jack Charles, speaking about the Box Hill Boys Home, "Compass", ABC, 2014.
Now and then, say a prayer for me. There is no one on Earth who doesn’t need it.- Richard Martin/Stephen Donaldson/Donny the Punk, personal letter, quoted in "Under the Rainbow", Columbia Magazine, 2016.
Could you send me a pair of roller skates - isn't that a staggering request - But we aren't confined to cells all day & sometimes it's too wet to exercise
- Grace Gifford, in a letter to William Orpen written from Kilmainham Gaol, 1923.
"I learned a lot from Marsha P. Johnson. I was 5’4” at the time, now I’m 5’2”. Marsha was this big, tall, Black drag queen transsexual, and she was not afraid.
I used to watch her before I started talking to her. We were both Virgos—she was born in 1945—and we would go and have coffee sometimes together, and we would talk about the police, and she just wasn’t afraid."
- Judy Bowen, speaking to Zackary Drucker, "Transgender Activist Judy Bowen Recalls the Stonewall Riots", Vice.com, 2018.
"One troubling part of my personality is a real love of Godzilla."
- WorldByStorm, Cedar Lounge Revolution, September 2023.
"Backstage, following what would turn out to be the penultimate Fun Boy Three show at the Los Angeles Palace, [Terry] Hall’s American product manager made the mistake of introducing him to a friend as his “product”. It’s hard to think of another word that could have so instantly flared up Hall’s snowballing self-loathing.'I hit him,' recalls Hall, 'Actually, I didn’t punch him that hard, but it was really dramatic because he was at the top of a spiral staircase. I mean, you can imagine.'"
- Terry Hall, interviewed by Pete Paphides, Fantastic Man magazine, 2019.
"I do not like to be obvious, like how some will start a song with 'one, two, three four!' I start a song any way I like. Sometimes I might tell the drummer something like this... (stares straight ahead then blinks four times)."-King Sunny Ade, International Musician and Recording World Magazine, 1985.
"If you want to follow Jesus, you had better look good on wood."- Father Daniel Berrigan, S.J.
"You're building a very sordid career. You're floating on the piss stream of pop, James B. You are soon to sink."- Chris Dean from the Redskins speaking to James Brown from Attack on Bzag fanzine, Attack on Bzag issue 7, 1984
In March 1985, the Miami Maniac married Mrs. Maniac, who was performed by Nancy Vasquez, in a ceremony during a game between the Hurricanes and the Maine Black Bears.
The fourteen-minute ceremony was broadcast in its entirety to a live national television audience on ESPN and was conducted by longtime Miami Hurricane baseball and University of Miami football announcer Jay Rokeach. Sebastian the Ibis, the mascot for all other University of Miami sporting events, served the Maniac's best man in the 1985 ceremony.
Others in attendance included Budweiser's Bud Man, McDonald's character Grimace, and McGruff the Crime Dog.
"Miami Maniac", wikipedia.org
"It is not a crime to be Jewish. I am not a dog. I have the right to live. My people have a right to exist on this earth, yet everywhere we are hunted down like animals."- Herschel Grynzpan, victim of Nazi persecution and assassin of Nazi diplomat Ernst Vom Rath.
"Can you imagine if Tuli owned the Yankees?” one speaker asks, presumably in reference to George Steinbrenner’s recent passing.“Dodgers!” shouts someone from the crowd.
“Fuck the Dodgers,” the speaker responds. “They split. I’m from Brooklyn, and I hate the Dodgers. Except draft dodgers.”
- Anonymous elegist at Tuli Kupferberg's funeral, quoted in "A Sweaty Sendoff" by Marc Tracy, The Tablet, 2010
"If the queens of America ever get together, said one redhead, aiming "her" stiletto heel with vicious precision, "it's the end, baby. We've had enough."- "Revolution...such fun! Black power, white power, student power, kid power, matron power, moon power", Lillian Roxon writes from New York, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 July 1969.
"Tell me, Mr Partners, what is advertising for? I mean, what use is it?""That," he replied immediately, "is the one question we must never pause to answer."
- "Absolute Beginners", Colin Ward, pg 121/122.
"Invasive doesn't matter in percentages when it comes to Flaco. As you mentioned he does not have a mate, and he will never mate outside of his breed and species. So, like many single New Yorkers who never got married, he will live out his interesting life and eventually die."
- comments section of an article about escaped zoo owl Flaco (2010-2024), the Gothamist, 2024.
QUOTE EXCISED DUE TO, ON REFLECTION, BEING TOO WEIRD
My mum used to shout “Do you want some gawp seed?” to people she judged had exceeded her two-second allowance for looking into her windows (Letters, 7 February). I presumed the “seed” would have sustained the gawpers as they moved on to their next window.
-Steve Oliver Wembury, Devon (Guardian letters page, 8th February 2024)
"And those who say, 'yes but the Bible does say, if you're a homosexual you're an abomination to God', you're right, and it comes right after the passage that says to touch the skin of a dead pig is an abomination to god, which puts the whole Super Bowl into serious question.
And if the Eagles never seem to win, it's because we have spiritual wide-end receivers, and when the ball comes their way, they refuse to touch the thing because of what the Bible teaches about abomination."
- Tony Campolo, "Christianity and Homosexuality", Suncrest United Methodist Church.
"All of the Republican presidential candidates say that gay people should be prohibited from getting married. But Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association says that gay people helped bring Nazism to Germany."
- "Did Nazis persecute gays, or were they gay themselves?", Jonathan Zimmerman, the Bakersfield Californian, August 2011.
"But in several Islamic hadiths, some kindly Muslims use their shoes to give water to animals; A 600-year-old Ethiopian manuscript depicts the Virgin Mary offering a dog a shoey of water from God himself (https://pemm.princeton.edu/stories/236). So there are ways to do what could be termed a benevolent shoey – but we’re just being mean to celebrities."- "Explain it to me quickly: The Brits coerced Kylie Minogue into doing ‘a shoey’. Where did this disgusting ritual originate?", Sian Cane, The Guardian Australia, March the 4th 2024.
"I hate labels but, yeah, I would describe myself as a socialist druid.”
- Jamie Reid, interviewed by Richard Cabut in "Keep Warm This Winter - Make Trouble", 3:am, March 13th 2004.
"My father used to say that you could salute Fine Gael people if you met them, but if you ever voted Fine Gael your right hand would wither off."- Colm Tóibín, "A Brush With the Law", The Dublin Review, Autumn 2007
"I worked then as a reporter in an FM radio station for young people in Oslo, Norway. Normally this radio station played rather stupid main stream pop music, - a bit like Capital Radio FM in London. After having interviewed Jens Stoltenberg, who was later to become our PM, he wanted us to play Special AKA 'Free Nelson Mandela'. This song was so good, so we started to play it quite often. And suddenly, this commercial FM radio station transformed at a moment into a ’lethal weapon’ of investigative journalism, somewhat inspired by the Free Nelson Mandela hit. Because sometimes later, I was told by a listener that one of Norway's oil tanker companies was regularly transporting oil and gas to SA, to help fuel the South African war machinery, in breach of the UN oil embargo against South Africa.
After weeks of research we got this piece of information confirmed. Then during a live broadcast, we called up the owner of the company, who probably expected some kind of cool small talk conversation on the air, - typical of any commercial FM radio. In stead he was confronted with the results of our weeks of research. At first he denied being involved in oil exports from Norway and Teeside, UK to Durban, SA, but after being told exactly when and where the export had taken place, he admitted that it was true. And afterwards, being put under massive pressure by leading media in Norway, he promised to stop all transport of oil to SA for good. The press campaign against him functioned as a bad press alert also for other Norwegian ship companies, so that a significant part of oil exports from Norway to South Africa was stopped.
This was our contribution to the struggle of the ANC and Nelson Mandela, partly because of a song - so thank you Jerry for a truly inspiring hit."
- ton9, the Guardian comments section, "Jerry Dammers: how I made Free Nelson Mandela", December 2013.
"Forget fair play: the only thing that ever mattered to Carlos Bilardo was winning – as he showed when his Sevilla side played Deportivo La Coruña. His physio, a man by the name of Domingo, had run on to the pitch to treat Diego Maradona but, seeing that there was nothing wrong with the Argentine, turned his attention to the bleeding face of the Deportivo defender Ribera.Most thought it a lovely gesture; Bilardo thought it all wrong and leapt from the bench screaming. 'Domingo, our players are the ones in red! In red! Jesus Christ I feel like dying!' he shouted, head almost exploding. 'You don't even give water to your opponents. All you do to opponents is stamp on them. Stamp on them! Stamp on them!'"
- "The Seven Deadly Sins of Football: Envy", The Guardian, May 2009
"He chills me. Reminds me of one of those Gilroy satirical cartoon grotesques from the Regency era. Always imagine him travelling by rickshaw and taking snuff."
- The Guardian commenter danielplainview discusses Andrew Lloyd Webber, "Feline queasy: eight urgent questions about the Cats trailer", Stuart Heritage, July 2019
QUOTE EXCISED FOR SECRET REASONS
"They asked if I was a feminist. Well, of course I am, darling. But they don't think that feminism is about sex, do they? It's about economics".
- Jean Ross, communist and writer, quoted by her daughter Sarah Caudwell.
"When I was heavily into Gandhi, non-violence etc.... I met Indira at a SLOPOKE gig in DC. She gave me this recipe and told me it would help in the struggle."- Anonymous contributor, Soy Not Oi! fanzine, 199?.
"At the vigil for Brianna Ghey in Soho Square we were encouraged to turn to the people next to us and tell them that they were loved. This was an important demonstration of solidarity at a time when most trans people in the UK will be feeling even more persecuted than usual. But it may not surprise you that my middle-aged cis-hetero English repression prevented me from participating."
That said, I have been thinking about my trans friends and comrades a great deal this last week. Young people talk about their 'love language' and I guess, if that is a thing, then I will express my love through writing about the radical history of Hackney."
- "A trans commune in Dalton (1979)", Hackney History blog, February 2023.
“So, and then I moved up to the Kingsmead, where I was fine for a while, because on a different floor of the same building was a gay male commune made up of reformed skinheads. Which meant that they dyed pink triangles on to their scalps, and adopted anti-fascist politics, having had fascist politics, but were still quite scary people.
On the other hand, they were on my side… there were a couple of times I got into arguments in clubs in the West End, and they appeared sort of out nowhere and said, 'She is our mate,' which was nice, but then they moved off to a farm in Wales or something. Farm or what, I don’t know. I don’t ask."
- Oral history interview with Roz Kaveney, quoted in "A trans commune in Dalton (1979)", Hackney History blog, February 2023.
"As a little girl growing up in the traditional South, it was considered 'tacky' if the bridesmaid's shoes did not match the punch served at the reception. Who comes up with this stuff?"- An anonymous 46-year-old from Georgia, quoted in "Older Adults Are Revealing The "Wedding Rules" That Existed When They Were Younger That Are No Longer A Thing Today", Buzzfeed, August 2024.
"I rang the gardai," said Susan, "and they were aware that Bono's peacock was flying around and I said what shall I do with him? and they said: 'I don't know, you can do what you want with it.' I replied: 'Well, supposing I kill it and put it in the oven?' and he actually said: 'I don't care.' He said to me that they had put too many man-hours into Bono's peacock."- "Bono's Bird Lands Him In Trouble", Marina Hyde for "Lost In Showbiz", The Guardian, June 2011.
"The photographer is like the cod which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity."- George Bernard Shaw, Introduction to the catalogue for an exhibition at the Royal Photographic Society, 1906
"See, what gets me is, people are paying rent for places I wouldn't squat in, nowadays"- Margaret Creagh, anarchist, on Radical Australia (3CR) in 2017
"We have enough problems without a radioactive Donegal"- Twitter user Celtic Ligers (@CelticLigers), October 26th 2024
"I revel in embodying attributes heretofore deemed unsuitable for women in this narrow society of binary gender oppositions. No God. No government. No husband."- Stinky, punk & radio host, interviewed by Liz Ham in Naarm in 2014.
"We were wondering when you and Christine were thinking of getting married."
"Marriage! That's just what you'd say, isn't it? Chris and me don't need any white, reactionary, middle-class ideas like marriage! I spit on marriage!
We've got a revolutionary relationship, pal, and we're going to go on living together, until I take her to Mozambique & we join the Black guerrilla forces there, & we both fight until we die. And if you don't like it, then that's too bloody bad."
- Basically Black, ABC, 1973
"The white boy knuckle dragging Dwarves worshipping apolitical at best 1981navel gazing and never changing punk world that Punk News represents is a curse upon the legacy of a movement started by freaks, queers, and people of color at the fringes who continue to make the world turn and create the coolest and newest shit that you’ll be ripping off in 7 years but refusing to support when it really matters. You might disrespect us, gatekeep us from your labels, your websites, your publications, your shows, and your financial support, but you will NEVER have what we have."
- Candace Hansen, "Somebody Named Candace", July 2024, CandaceHansen.com
"When the Dodgers left Brooklyn, that's when the cynicism first came to me. I was never the same after that. That's really true. I'm imbued with cynicism from that which I never recovered because they went to LA.... To this day I'm specifically not happy for the Dodgers when they go to the World Series."
- Lou Reed, interviewed in Newsday, January 1989
"Looking back on my career, that’s the only thing I’ve learned: don’t fall asleep in a skip."
- Mark Stewart, "There Is No Neutral: The Strange World Of… Mark Stewart", The Quietus, April 2019.
"There is no demilitarised zone in this class war. We must all decide where we stand."
- George Monbiot, "Motherfrackers", 20th January 2025, monbiot.com
Gary: And I'm not trying to come across as self-righteous, because I'm a creep as much as anybody, but if you treat people like they are empowered, they'll usually act that way. That's all we can hope for.
David: You are sort of already recognizing that they are already liberated.
Gary: Because they are. Maybe they don't know it. You treat someone like that, and they are going to be a whole lot happier with their lives.
- "Interview with Gary Floyd by David Ensminger," August 2017, Razorcake.org
My best friend Phoebe is obsessed with revenge and it has driven a wedge between us.
"Recently, on the way to the airport for a holiday in Greece together, we had a horrible taxi driver. He was rude and didn’t help us with our bags when getting into the car. He was on the phone for half the ride and ignored us when we asked him to change the radio station. After we got out, Phoebe said she had secretly slipped half a punnet of blueberries into the door compartment to “get her own back”.
When I asked her what the point of that was, she said it made her feel better and that he deserved it. Perhaps he did, but I don’t get why she would actually do that. If we all went around doing what we felt like, the world would be chaos. Phoebe says I don’t understand her because she’s a Scorpio."
- "You be the judge: should my friend stop being so vengeful?", The Guardian, December 2024
"In 2004, at a Brian Wilson gig at the Royal Festival Hall, a heckler spotted the Hoff and shouted: 'You are nothing without your robot car, nothing!'"- excerpt from a piece titled "10 Strangest Concert Venues" (David Hasselhoff at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin), Observer Music Monthly, May 2006
[QUOTE EXCISED DUE TO, ON REFLECTION, NOT BEING WEIRD ENOUGH]
"We have a mass murderer in the White House. He gets a pat on the back, and I get 15 to life."- Regi Mentle, LA punk who served 32 years in California prisons for 2nd degree murder, in an interview from "Yes, Ms. Davis" fanzine, issue 1, 1994.
No offense to anyone who was there, but the early California punk scene was, more or less, a giant gross-out contest between hundreds of suburban creeps trying to out-Sid Vicious one another. Not that there's anything wrong with that [...].
- "Crate Digger: Black Randy and the Metrosquad", James Greene Jr., Crawdaddy, September 2007.
[QUOTE EXCISED DUE TO SECRET REASONS}
"Schwitters was well-liked in the camp, and was a welcome distraction from the internment they were suffering. Fellow internees would later recall fondly his curious habits of sleeping under his bed and barking like a dog, as well as his regular Dadaist readings and performances."- "Kurt Schwitters", wikipedia.org
"Abel Ferrara, he’s a wild man, he was all over the place. Schoolly D worked with him on King of New York, and he told me: 'Abel is a great guy, he taught me a lot about the film business. Although he did also introduce me to heroin.' Then he says – and this is my favourite quote: 'One thing about Abel is he will never lie to you. Unless he’s lying to you.'”- "Ice-T: ‘Anybody that thinks controversy is a way to make money, it’s not. You need lawyers!’", the Guardian, October 2024
"What is a protest march to the kiss of a lover who is not dead yet?"- Dagogo Hart
NOTE: Quotation does not necessarily mean endorsement of the person or publication quoted.
If you would like to read the excised quotes, even the quotes excised for secret reasons, please send me an e-mail.
I love to send and receive e-mails.