Weird Quotes - page 52
While I was working on Downward Spiral, I was living in the house where Sharon Tate was killed. Then one day I met her sister. It was a random thing, just a brief encounter. And she said: "Are you exploiting my sister's death by living in her house?" For the first time, the whole thing kind of slapped me in the face. I said, "No, it's just sort of my own interest in American folklore. I'm in this place where a weird part of history occurred." I guess it never really struck me before, but it did then. She lost her sister from a senseless, ignorant situation that I don't want to support. When she was talking to me, I realized for the first time, "What if it was my sister?" I thought, "Fuck Charlie Manson." I went home and cried that night. It made me see there's another side to things, you know?
Trent Reznor
There's simultaneously something rigorous and something playful in genre. It's about the positing of something impossible-whether not-yet-possible or never-possible-and then taking that impossibility and granting it its own terms and systematicity. It's carnivalesque in its impossibility and overturning of reality, but it's rationalist in that it pretends it is real. And it's that second element which I think those who dip their toes in the SF pond so often forget. They think sf is "about” analogies, and metaphors, and so on. I refute that-I think that those are inevitable components, but it's the surrendering to the impossible, the weird, that characterizes genre. Those flirting with SF don't surrender to it; they distance themselves from it, and have a neon sub-text saying, "It's okay, this isn't really about spaceships or aliens, it's about real life,” not understanding that it can be both, and would do the latter better if it was serious about the former.
China Miéville
"Harold, if you'll excuse me-" "But whatever can you be doing, my child?" The unreality was trying to creep back in again, and she found herself wondering just how much the human brain could be expected to stand before snapping like an overtaxed rubber band. My parents are dead, but I can take it. Some weird disease seems to have spread across the entire country, maybe the entire world, mowing down the righteous and the unrighteous alike- I can take it. I'm digging a hole in the garden my father was weeding only last week, and when it's deep enough I guess I'm going to put him in it- I think I can take it. But Harold Lauder in Roy Brannigan's Cadillac, feeling me up with his eyes and calling me "my child"? I don't know, my Lord, I just don't know.
Stephen King
Come Live With Me, with Jimmy Stewart, one of the sweetest men in the world. I was so happy about this picture; it was my first chance to do a charming, humorous story. Until then, my image was that of an exotic creature. My character name in that movie was Johnny Jones. In H. M. Pulham, Esq., I was tagged Marvin Myles, and in Comrade X I was christened Theodore. Why, I wondered, did they give a supposedly sexy lady such weird names? Ah, Hollywood!
Hedy Lamarr
I'm still not sure what went wrong with the site, so I'll just do what I always do in these situations and assume it was a causality casualty from war with an alternate timeline. Rolling with that assumption on all of life's little problems can give you a terrific perspective on things. Y'know? "Augh, fuck. It's raining!” becomes, "Huh, it's raining,” and then with a bemused nod, "Typical 31st century Mega-Etruscan tactic. ”And then when your friends look at you weird, you can give them a pitying gaze, clutch their heads to your bosom, and lament that they too have been affected by the wars. Something like, "Oh, you poor dear. You've no memory of what never shall be.” I don't have many friends anymore. Not since the war took them.
Brian Clevinger
Two invasive species in particular have caused serious concern: Burmese pythons, and New Yorkers. The New Yorkers have been coming for years, which is weird because pretty much all they do once they get to Florida is bitch about how everything here sucks compared to the earthly paradise that is New York. They continue to root, loudly, for the Jets, the Knicks, the Mets, and the Yankees; they never stop declaring, loudly, that in New York the restaurants are better, the stores are nicer, the people are smarter, the public transportation is free of sharks, etc. The Burmese pythons are less obnoxious, but just as alarming in their own way. These are snakes that started out as pets of Miami residents, until one day these residents stopped smoking crack and said, "Jesus H. Christ! We're living with a giant snake!"
Dave Barry
Experiences like that led the band to develop the Retaliation Song. The way it worked was, if they were forced to perform a song they hated, they'd retaliate by playing a song that was even worse. For example, if the band had to play "My Way," it would counterattack with Bobby Goldsboro's sap-oozing piece of dreck, "Honey" (She wrecked the car and she was sad, and so afraid that I'd be mad, but what the heck!). One night, at a wedding reception, an extremely drunk man ordered the band to perform "The Ballad of the Green Berets," and then, a half hour later, demanded that it be played again. That night, Arrival struck back with the hydrogen bomb of retaliation songs: "In the Year 2525," the relentlessly ugly Zager and Evans song with the disturbingly weird lyrics (You won't find a thing to chew! Nobody's gonna look at you!). Some guests actually fled the room. (Chapter 3)
Dave Barry