The last time somebody said, 'I find I can write much better with a word processor', I replied, 'They used to say the same thing about drugs'. Roy Blount, Jr. More Quotes by Roy Blount, Jr. More Quotes From Roy Blount, Jr. Vincent van Gogh's mother painted all of his best things. The famous mailed decapitated ear was a figment of the public relations firm engaged by Van Gogh's dealer. Roy Blount, Jr. public-relations mother ears I am open to the accusation that I see compost as an end it itself. But we do grow some real red damn tomatoes such as you can't get in the stores. And potatoes, beans, lettuce, collards, onions, squash, cauliflower, eggplant, carrots, peppers. Dirt in you own backyard, producing things you eat. Makes you wonder. Roy Blount, Jr. eggplant squash real I've never thought it was necessary to make fun of people - you can find fun in people without necessarily mocking them. Roy Blount, Jr. fun people I think a writer is not an ideal husband... Writers tend to get off into their own heads and not notice the people that they're living with, or they get irritable with the people that they're living with when the people insist on being noticed. Roy Blount, Jr. husband writing thinking The local groceries are all out of broccoli, loccoli. Roy Blount, Jr. groceries broccoli locals In the beginning, Atlanta was without form, and void; and it still is. Roy Blount, Jr. void atlanta form Doctors and lawyers must go to school for years and years, often with little sleep and with great sacrifice to their first wives. Roy Blount, Jr. sacrifice sleep school Twiddle-twiddle away at my softly clicky keyboard for a while, making twiddly adjustments all along- and then print what I have twiddled. Glare at the printout and snarl and curse and scribble almost illegibly all over it with a ballpoint pen. Go back to the machine and enter the scribbles. Repeat this procedure until I hate the very meaning of every word I know. Roy Blount, Jr. keyboards machines hate Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party. Roy Blount, Jr. party together book Obama's got a great sense of humor, but mainly he has a great thinking presence, which is uncommon. It's hard to imagine being able to do, think over answers and deliver them on television. If I were president I would constantly be spluttering. Roy Blount, Jr. president answers thinking If a cat spoke, it would say things like, 'Hey, I don't see the problem here.' Roy Blount, Jr. hey cat problem When money gets too far away from actual, physical, real equity and property it gets too abstract and too distantly derived and then suddenly it's not worth anything anymore. And the same is true of language. Roy Blount, Jr. far-away language real When I weed, I like to get off into my own head. For one thing, my wife plants and I have trouble telling which plants are weeds and which are my favorite plants. So I tend to hop around and grab the weeds that I know are weeds. So I don't weed all that linearly. I tend to weed haphazardly. Roy Blount, Jr. weed wife trouble To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. I don't remember what I was like before I learned my ABC's, but for as long as I can remember I have made them with my fingers and felt them in my bones. Roy Blount, Jr. abcs letters long According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary. Roy Blount, Jr. scholar arbitrary relation Contemporary American children, if they are old enough to grasp the concept of Santa Claus by Thanksgiving, are able to see through it by December 15th. Roy Blount, Jr. santa thanksgiving children A picture's worth a thousand words? A library card's worth millions. Roy Blount, Jr. library thousand cards New York walking isn't exercise: it's a continually showing make-your-own movie. Roy Blount, Jr. new-york exercise walking I do not know what the cat can have eaten. Usually I know exactly what the cat has eaten. Not only have I fed it to the cat, at the cat's insistence, but the cat has thrown it up on the rug, and someone has tracked it all over onto the other rug. I do not know why cats are such habitual vomiters. They do not seem to enjoy it, judging by the sounds they make while they are doing it. It's their nature. A dog is going to bark. A cat is going to vomit. Roy Blount, Jr. cat nature dog Pete Rose is too rich a character to fit on a bronze plaque. He requires a good, trenchant, poignant (ah, Petey) book, and this is it. Roy Blount, Jr. rose character book