Quotes4study

The weird sisters.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1564-1616.     _Macbeth. Act iv. Sc. 1._

I think for it to be unhip to be idealistic is weird, you know? I mean, even all the best rebels to me had some sense of hope in them.

Tom Petty (born 20 October 1950

It seemed weird calling a teenager 'sir' but I'd learned to be careful with immortals. They tended to get offended easily. Then, they blew stuff up.

Rick Riordan

I’m going to be hit by a car in about four hours, but I don’t know that yet. The weird thing is, it’s not the car that’s going to kill me, that’s going to erase me from the world. It’s something totally different. Something that happens eight days from now and threatens to end everything. My name is Shelby Jane Cooper—is, was, whatever. I’m seventeen years old when the car crash happens. This is my story.

Nick Lake

Nought else there is / But that weird beat of Time, which doth disjoin / To-day from Hellas.

_Lewis Morris._

I just want to have a completely adventurous, passionate, weird life.

Jeff Buckley

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.

John Green

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like betrayal

John Green

Children ate whole wheat pasta and whole wheat bread and all sorts of weird coarse-grained rice that their stomachs could not digest properly, but that didn’t matter because it was “beneficial,” it was “healthy,” it was “wholesome.

Karl Ove Knausgård

If the invention of derivatives was the financial world's modernist dawn, the current crisis is unsettlingly like the birth of postmodernism. For anyone who studied literature in college in the past few decades, there is a weird familiarity about the current crisis: value, in the realm of finance capital, parallels the elusive nature of meaning in deconstrucitonism. According to Jacques Derrida, the doyen of the school, meaning can never be precisely located; instead, it is always 'deferred,' moved elsewhere, located in other meanings, which refer and defer to other meanings—a snake permanently and necessarily eating its own tail. This process is fluid and constant, but at moments the perpetual process of deferral stalls and collapses in on itself. Derrida called this moment an 'aporia,' from a Greek term meaning 'impasse.' There is something both amusing and appalling about seeing his theories acted out in the world markets to such cataclysmic effect.

John Lanchester

By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE out of TIME.

Edgar Allan Poe

She had the kind of smile you see in toothpaste commercials, where you can see practically all of somebody's teeth. She should smile like that all the time, Park thought; it made her face cross over from weird to beautiful. He wanted to make her smile like that constantly.

Rainbow Rowell

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro..."

Hunter S. Thompson

I have no respect for people who deliberately try to be weird to attract attention, but if that's who you honestly are, you shouldn't try to "normalize yourself".

Alicia Witt

We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.

Robert Fulghum

It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.

Freeman Dyson

I *know* it's weird, but strict vars already comes very, very close to

partitioning the crowd into those who can deal with local lexicals and

those who can't.

        -- Larry Wall in <199710050130.SAA04762@wall.org>

Fortune Cookie

<Knghtbrd> shaleh - unclean is just WEIRD.

<Espy> heh, unclean is cool

<Knghtbrd> Espy - and weird.

<Espy> yes, weird too

Fortune Cookie

It hangs down from the chandelier

Nobody knows quite what it does

Its color is odd and its shape is weird</p>

It emits a high-sounding buzz

It grows a couple of feet each day

and wriggles with sort of a twitch

Nobody bugs it 'cause it comes from

a visiting uncle who's rich!

        -- To "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear"

Fortune Cookie

"We're not talking about the same thing," he said. "For you the world is

>weird because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. For me

the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious,

unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must accept

responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous

desert, in this marvelous time.  I wanted to convince you that you must

learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a

short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it."

        -- Don Juan

Fortune Cookie

AmigaDOS Beer: The company has gone out of business, but their recipe has

been picked up by some weird German company, so now this beer will be an

import.  This beer never really sold very well because the original

manufacturer didn't understand marketing. Like Unix Beer, AmigaDOS Beer

fans are an extremely loyal and loud group. It originally came in a

16-oz. can, but now comes in 32-oz.  cans too.  When this can was

originally introduced, it appeared flashy and colorful, but the design

hasn't changed much over the years, so it appears dated now.  Critics of

this beer claim that it is only meant for watching TV anyway.

Fortune Cookie

character density, n.:

    The number of very weird people in the office.

Fortune Cookie

Is it weird in here, or is it just me?

        -- Steven Wright

Fortune Cookie

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

        -- Hunter S. Thompson

Fortune Cookie

> > Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why I

> > should use Linux over BSD?

>

> No.  That's it.  The cool name, that is.  We worked very hard on

> creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it

> certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able

> to say "OS/2? Hah.  I've got Linux.  What a cool name".  386BSD made the

> mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the

> name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too

> technical.

(Linus Torvalds' follow-up to a question about Linux)

Fortune Cookie

He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and heavy

presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope of ever

behaving "normally."

        -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"

Fortune Cookie

A lot of the stuff I do is so minimal, and it's designed to be minimal.

The smallness of it is what's attractive.  It's weird, 'cause it's so

intellectually lame.  It's hard to see me doing that for the rest of

my life.  But at the same time, it's what I do best.

        -- Chris Elliot, writer and performer on "Late Night with David Letterman"

Fortune Cookie

The bank called to tell me that I'm overdrawn,

Some freaks are burning crosses out on my front lawn,

And I *can't*believe* it, all the Cheetos are gone,

    It's just ONE OF THOSE DAYS!

        -- Weird Al Yankovic, "One of Those Days"

Fortune Cookie

#define BITCOUNT(x)    (((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255)

#define  BX_(x)        ((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777)            \

                 - (((x)>>2)&0x33333333)            \

                 - (((x)>>3)&0x11111111))

        -- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word

Fortune Cookie

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro..."

        -- Hunter S. Thompson

Fortune Cookie

"I thought that you said you were 20 years old!"

"As a programmer, yes," she replied,

"And you claimed to be very near two meters tall!"

"You said you were blonde, but you lied!"

Oh, she was a hacker and he was one, too,

They had so much in common, you'd say.

They exchanged jokes and poems, and clever new hacks,

And prompts that were cute or risque'.

He sent her a picture of his brother Sam,

She sent one from some past high school day,

And it might have gone on for the rest of their lives,

If they hadn't met in L.A.

"Your beard is an armpit," she said in disgust.

He answered, "Your armpit's a beard!"

And they chorused: "I think I could stand all the rest

If you were not so totally weird!"

If she had not said what he wanted to hear,

And he had not done just the same,

They'd have been far more honest, and never have met,

And would not have had fun with the game.

        -- Judith Schrier, "Face to Face After Six Months of

        Electronic Mail"

Fortune Cookie

Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term, convertible

only through the use of weird and unnatural conversion factors.  Velocity,

for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.

Fortune Cookie

<lilo> it's weird, when you go on a safari to Africa to catch a lion, you

       find it alive and it charges, and then you kill it

<lilo> when you go on a safari to South Bay to find a Palm Vx, you find

       it dead and take it home and it charges after it arrives :)

Fortune Cookie

People think my friend George is weird because he wears sideburns...behind his

ears.  I think he's weird because he wears false teeth...with braces on them.

        -- Steven Wright

Fortune Cookie

<danpat> Omnic: bloody newzealanders

<Omnic> danpat: put a sock in it

<danpat> heh :)

<knghtbrd> making fun of .nz'ers is different---they're all weird</p>

* knghtbrd hides

<Omnic> hrmph

Fortune Cookie

"They know your name, address, telephone number, credit card numbers, who ELSE

is driving the car "for insurance", ...  your driver's license number. In the

state of Massachusetts, this is the same number as that used for Social

Security, unless you object to such use. In THAT case, you are ASSIGNED a

number and you reside forever more on the list of "weird people who don't give

out their Social Security Number in Massachusetts."

        -- Arthur Miller

Fortune Cookie

And other operators aren't so special syntactically, but weird</p>

in other ways, like "scalar", and "goto".

        -- Larry Wall in <199711071749.JAA29751@wall.org>

Fortune Cookie

Too cool to calypso,

Too tough to tango,

Too weird to watusi

        -- The Only Ones

Fortune Cookie

> > Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why I

> > should use Linux over BSD?

>

> No.  That's it.  The cool name, that is.  We worked very hard on

> creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it

> certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able

> to say "OS/2? Hah.  I've got Linux.  What a cool name".  386BSD made the

> mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the

> name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too

> technical.

        -- Linus Torvalds' follow-up to a question about Linux

Fortune Cookie

When he got in trouble in the ring, [Ali] imagined a door swung open and

inside he could see neon, orange, and green lights blinking, and bats

blowing trumpets and alligators blowing trombones, and he could hear snakes

screaming.  Weird masks and actors' clothes hung on the wall, and if he

stepped across the sill and reached for them, he knew that he was committing

himself to destruction.

        -- George Plimpton

Fortune Cookie

I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah

Where it bubbles all the time like a giant carbonated soda

    S-O-D-A soda

I saw the little runt sitting there on a log

I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda

    Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda

Well I've been around but I ain't never seen

A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green

    Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda

Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand

How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand

    Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda

        -- Weird Al Yankovic, "The Star Wars Song," to the tune of

           "Lola" by the Kinks

Fortune Cookie

Tcl tends to get ported to weird places like routers.

        -- Larry Wall in <199710071721.KAA19014@wall.org>

Fortune Cookie

I know it's weird, but it does make it easier to write poetry in perl.    :-)

        -- Larry Wall in <7865@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>

Fortune Cookie

She stretched out her hand, and I went down on my knee and put it to my lips. I had not considered how I should take leave of her; it came naturally to me at the moment to do this. She looked at Sarah Pocket with triumph in her weird eyes, and so I left my fairy godmother, with both her hands on her crutch stick, standing in the midst of the dimly lighted room beside the rotten bride-cake that was hidden in cobwebs.

Charles Dickens     Great Expectations

Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under her rough robe. Carelessly worn, it was a becoming robe enough, in a certain weird way, and her dark hair looked rich under her coarse red cap. Lying hidden in her bosom, was a loaded pistol. Lying hidden at her waist, was a sharpened dagger. Thus accoutred, and walking with the confident tread of such a character, and with the supple freedom of a woman who had habitually walked in her girlhood, bare-foot and bare-legged, on the brown sea-sand, Madame Defarge took her way along the streets.

Charles Dickens     A Tale of Two Cities

From the streets beyond the high wall and the strong gate, there came the usual night hum of the city, with now and then an indescribable ring in it, weird and unearthly, as if some unwonted sounds of a terrible nature were going up to Heaven.

Charles Dickens     A Tale of Two Cities

From Estella she looked at me, with a searching glance that seemed to pry into my heart and probe its wounds. "How does she use you, Pip; how does she use you?" she asked me again, with her witch-like eagerness, even in Estella's hearing. But, when we sat by her flickering fire at night, she was most weird; for then, keeping Estella's hand drawn through her arm and clutched in her own hand, she extorted from her, by dint of referring back to what Estella had told her in her regular letters, the names and conditions of the men whom she had fascinated; and as Miss Havisham dwelt upon this roll, with the intensity of a mind mortally hurt and diseased, she sat with her other hand on her crutch stick, and her chin on that, and her wan bright eyes glaring at me, a very spectre.

Charles Dickens     Great Expectations

About midnight Joe awoke, and called the boys. There was a brooding oppressiveness in the air that seemed to bode something. The boys huddled themselves together and sought the friendly companionship of the fire, though the dull dead heat of the breathless atmosphere was stifling. They sat still, intent and waiting. The solemn hush continued. Beyond the light of the fire everything was swallowed up in the blackness of darkness. Presently there came a quivering glow that vaguely revealed the foliage for a moment and then vanished. By and by another came, a little stronger. Then another. Then a faint moan came sighing through the branches of the forest and the boys felt a fleeting breath upon their cheeks, and shuddered with the fancy that the Spirit of the Night had gone by. There was a pause. Now a weird flash turned night into day and showed every little grassblade, separate and distinct, that grew about their feet. And it showed three white, startled faces, too. A deep peal of thunder went rolling and tumbling down the heavens and lost itself in sullen rumblings in the distance. A sweep of chilly air passed by, rustling all the leaves and snowing the flaky ashes broadcast about the fire. Another fierce glare lit up the forest and an instant crash followed that seemed to rend the treetops right over the boys' heads. They clung together in terror, in the thick gloom that followed. A few big raindrops fell pattering upon the leaves.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

He smelled of warm, sleepy male. She had forgotten what a weirdly potent scent that was.

Jojo Moyes

I had had so many reasons to believe in my friend's subtle powers of reasoning and extraordinary energy in action that I felt that he must have some solid grounds for the assured and easy demeanour with which he treated the singular mystery which he had been called upon to fathom. Once only had I known him to fail, in the case of the King of Bohemia and of the Irene Adler photograph; but when I looked back to the weird business of the Sign of Four, and the extraordinary circumstances connected with the Study in Scarlet, I felt that it would be a strange tangle indeed which he could not unravel.

Arthur Conan Doyle     The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

When they reached the haunted house there was something so weird and grisly about the dead silence that reigned there under the baking sun, and something so depressing about the loneliness and desolation of the place, that they were afraid, for a moment, to venture in. Then they crept to the door and took a trembling peep. They saw a weedgrown, floorless room, unplastered, an ancient fireplace, vacant windows, a ruinous staircase; and here, there, and everywhere hung ragged and abandoned cobwebs. They presently entered, softly, with quickened pulses, talking in whispers, ears alert to catch the slightest sound, and muscles tense and ready for instant retreat.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasis, and with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it. Afterwards she kept her hands there for a little while, and slowly took them away as if they were heavy.

Charles Dickens     Great Expectations

Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength.

Thomas Pynchon

Saving for the one weird smile at first, I should have felt almost sure that Miss Havisham's face could not smile. It had dropped into a watchful and brooding expression,--most likely when all the things about her had become transfixed,--and it looked as if nothing could ever lift it up again. Her chest had dropped, so that she stooped; and her voice had dropped, so that she spoke low, and with a dead lull upon her; altogether, she had the appearance of having dropped body and soul, within and without, under the weight of a crushing blow.

Charles Dickens     Great Expectations

Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why.

        -- Hunter S. Thompson

Fortune Cookie

_Physical Features; Flora and Fauna._--A great part of Ashanti is covered with primeval and almost impenetrable forest.[1] Many of the trees, chiefly silk-cotton and hardwood, attain splendid proportions, the bombax reaching a height of over 200 ft., but the monotony is oppressive, and is seldom relieved by the sight of flowers, birds or beasts. Ferns are abundant, and the mimosa rises to heights of from 30 to 60 ft. All over the forest spread lianas, or monkey-ropes, their usual position being that of immense festoons hanging from tree to tree. To these lianas (species of which yield one kind of the rubber of commerce) is due largely the weird aspect of the forest. The country round the towns, however, is cultivated with care, the fields yielding in abundance grain, yams, vegetables and fruits. In the north-eastern districts the primeval forest gives place to park-like country, consisting of plains covered with high coarse grass, and dotted with occasional baobabs, as well as with wild plum, shea-butter, dwarf date, fan palms, and other small trees. Among the wild animals are the elephant (comparatively rare), the leopard, varieties of antelope, many kinds of monkeys and numerous venomous snakes. Crocodiles and two kinds of hippopotami, the ordinary and a pygmy variety, are found in the rivers. Of birds, parrots are the most characteristic. Insect life is abundant. Entry: ASHANTI

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Slice 7 "Arundel, Thomas" to "Athens"     1910-1911

Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.

        -- Dykstra

Fortune Cookie

Of a more genially humoristic order are his well-known book illustrations, now so deservedly esteemed for their inimitable fun and frolic, among other qualities, such as the weird and terrible, in which he excelled. Early in this series came _The Humorist_ (1819-1821) and _Life in Paris_ (1822). The well-known series of _Life in London_, conjointly produced by the brothers I. R. and G. Cruikshank, has enjoyed a prolonged reputation, and is still sought after by collectors. Grimm's _Collection of German Popular Stories_ (1824-1826), in two series, with 22 inimitable etchings, are in themselves sufficient to account for G. Cruikshank's reputation. To the first fourteen volumes (1837-1843) of _Bentley's Miscellany_ Cruikshank contributed 126 of his best plates, etched on steel, including the famous illustrations to _Oliver Twist_, _Jack Sheppard_, _Guy Fawkes_ and _The Ingoldsby Legends_. For W. Harrison Ainsworth, Cruikshank illustrated _Rookwood_ (1836) and _The Tower of London_ (1840); the first six volumes of _Ainsworth's Magazine_ (1842-1844) were illustrated by him with several of his finest suites of etchings. For C. Lever's _Arthur O'Leary_ he supplied 10 full-page etchings (1844), and 20 spirited graphic etchings for Maxwell's lurid _History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798_ (1845). Of his own speculations, mention must be made of _George Cruikshank's Omnibus_ (1841) and _George Cruikshank's Table Book_ (1845), as well as his _Comic Almanack_ (1835-1853). _The Life of Sir John Falstaff_ contained 20 full-page etchings (1857-1858). These are a few leading items amongst the thousands of illustrations emanating from that fertile imagination. As an enthusiastic teetotal advocate, G. Cruikshank produced a long series of pictures and illustrations, pictorial pamphlets and tracts; the best known of these are _The Bottle_, 8 plates (1847), with its sequel, _The Drunkard's Children_, 8 plates (1848), with the ambitious work, _The Worship of Bacchus_, published by subscription after the artist's oil painting, now in the National Gallery, London, to which it was presented by his numerous admirers. Entry: A

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 7 "Crocoite" to "Cuba"     1910-1911

ERLKÖNIG, or ERL-KING, a mythical character in modern German literature, represented as a gigantic bearded man with a golden crown and trailing garments, who carries children away to that undiscovered country where he himself abides. There is no such personage in ancient German mythology, and the name is linguistically nothing more than the perpetuation of a blunder. It first appeared in Herder's _Stimmen der Völker_ (1778), where it is used in the translation of the Danish song of the _Elf-King's Daughter_ as equivalent to the Danish _ellerkonge_, or _ellekonge_, that is, _elverkonge_, the king of the elves; and the true German word would have been _Elbkönig_ or _Elbenkönig_, afterwards used under the modified form of _Elfenkönig_ by Wieland in his _Oberon_ (1780). Herder was probably misled by the fact that the Danish word _elle_ signifies not only elf, but also alder tree (Ger. _Erle_). His mistake at any rate has been perpetuated by both English and French translators, who speak of a "king of the alders," "un roi des aunes," and find an explanation of the myth in the tree-worship of early times, or in the vapoury emanations that hang like weird phantoms round the alder trees at night. The legend was adopted by Goethe as the subject of one of his finest ballads, rendered familiar to English readers by the translations of Lewis and Sir Walter Scott; and since then it has been treated as a musical theme by Reichardt and Schubert. Entry: ERLKÖNIG

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 7 "Equation" to "Ethics"     1910-1911

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