"A Sort of a Song"
The Wedge (1944)
Context: Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
— through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.
“My lovely shining fragile broken house is filled with flowers and founded on a rock.”
Love Lies Bleeding
Song lyrics, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973)
The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Hannibal
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), chapter 2
“Personally, I like to defiantly split my infinitives.”
[199708271551.IAA10211@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997
“I decided to pack up my marimba and split.”
Quotations from SophieBHawkins.com
Context: Before I was signed, I just wanted to get into the system, even though I didn't know what that meant. After I got signed I found that I was confused by all the mixed messages from the label about what I'd have to do to keep their support. I fought and fought to maintain my identity and grow as an artist at the same time, but when I realized that to get their support on Timbre I'd have to start working with schlocky writers and totally sell out, I decided to pack up my marimba and split.
Source: 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894), chapter 1: The Sierra Nevada
“When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.”
In a letter to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly.
Context: By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1cYWq1bm_Q
Quotes from Judge Judy cases, Dismissing a statement or case
