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1 " Part of the blame lies with intellectuals who are unable or unwilling to convey their ideas in terms that will play down to the cafe. But anyone who sits in that cafe and dismisses complexity by reveling in their own simplicity is no less pretentious. "
― Michael Perry
2 " There is this male tendency to believe that somehow the initial two weeks of snappy dressing, full eye contact, and best behavior will balance out thirty years of holey underwear, mumbling, and anatomic decline. It is one thing to be a work in progress, quite another to be a work in regress. Familiarity is no excuse for lowering your standards.- from Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace "
3 " I understand that what you're doing when you call 911--it sounds so perfunctory--is announcing to strangers that you are losing the battle. I no longer have the strength, I no longer have the answers, the trouble is winning, and won't you please come help"? "
4 " I got religion in the third grade, and jeepers, did I need it. The devil was in me, and Hardy Biesterveld wasn't helping. "
5 " Sometimes opportunity has the shelf life of a Twinkie in a pigpen.-from The Jesus Cow "
6 " Klute Sorensen’s recent sleeplessness wasn’t solely attributable to the fact that his CPAP roamed his face like a possessive octopus.-from The Jesus Cow "
7 " If forgetfulness were a sport, I’d have a shoe contract.-from Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace "
8 " From the get-go, my hair was programmed to fall out. One is grateful this so rarely happens with the pancreas or the eyeballs. "
9 " The amateur study of philosophy is like taking a few laps with a NASCAR driver. You’re not qualified to do it on your own, you have no business behind the wheel, but for a few laps or paragraphs, you’re right in there with ‘em, and when it’s all over, you’ve learned something. Or, as my local fire chief once said, you’ve simply exasperated the situation. "
10 " It’s hard to talk about guns without sounding defensive or blustery. I’m pro-gun the same way I’m pro-potato fork. I use them both to gather food for the year, with the caveat that if you break into my house, I won’t be waiting for yo at the top of the stairs with a potato fork. "
11 " In 1951, a man bought a pickup truck because he needed to load things up and move them. Things like bricks and bags of feed. Somewhere along the line trendsetters and marketers got involved, and now we buy pickups -- big, horse-powered, overbuilt, wide-assed, comfortable pickups -- so that we may stick our key in the ignition of an icon, fire up an image, and drive off in a cloud of connotations. I have no room to talk. I long to get my International running part so I can drive down roads that no longer exist. "
12 " I am paddling laps in a demitasse of home-brewed ennui "
