Letter Y
From the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
in "Cakes and Ale".
A fine writer, whose A Writer's Notebook (1949) made interesting reading, too. My heroine
Shary Flenniken
regards The Razor's Edge particularly highly. (Sufficient reason for me to read it, certainly.)
Every writer hits now and then upon a thought that seems to him so happy, a repartee that amuses him so much, that to cut it is worse than having a tooth out; it is then that it is well to have engraved on his heart the maxim, If you can, cut.
Knowing when to kill your babies; always difficult.
... there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.
This one, I found quoted by Harlan Ellison in the In Memoriam section of Nebula Award Stories #4, edited by Poul Anderson (1969).
"Umm Qasr is a town similar to Southampton,"
UK Defence Minister Geoff Hoon told the House
of Commons yesterday.
"He's either never been to Southampton, or he's never been to Umm Qasr," said one British soldier,
informed of this while on patrol in Umm Qasr.
Another added: "There's no beer, no prostitutes, and people are shooting at us. It's more like Portsmouth."
Oh, the horrors of the modern soundbite for a Minister of Defence during a war. Or, to put it another way... "Umm!"
Scandal is merely the compassionate allowance which the gay make to the humdrum. Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.
But where would we be without politicians?