Act I
Romanoff and Juliet (1956)
Context: The only one who's always punctual is Death … whatever the time he always strikes his knell at the first streak of dawn … and believe me, he knows what he's doing. How I hate the dawn! It's the hour of the firing squad. The last glass of brandy. The ultimate cigarette. The final wish. All the hideously calculated hypocrisy of men when they commit a murder in the name of justice. Then it's the time of death on a grander scale, the hour of the great offenses … fix your bayonets boys …gentlemen, synchronize your watches … in ten seconds time the barrage starts … a thousand men are destined to die in order to capture a farmhouse no one has lived in for years... And finally dawn is the herald of the day, our twelve hours of unimportance, when we have to cede to the pressures of the powers, smile at people we have every reason but expediency to detest … A diplomat these days is nothing but a head-waiter who's allowed to sit down occasionally.
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
Variant: There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
“There is nothing wrong with us sitting down and arguing that issue that we are a European country.”
Source: Newsday (11 November 1992). <ref> https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/12/09/buchanan-wont-dodge-issues-used-by-duke/b453450b-4ed9-445d-b862-a2bc4dc08993/?utm_term=.5e83276abd1b
“When my pencil starts moving, it must be allowed its head or - bang! - nothing more happens.”
Source: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 61/62 - in a letter to his friend Etienne Devismes, Late Summer of 1881
“A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.”
Nonfiction, Dave Barry Turns 50 (1998)
The Guardian (4 March 2005)
