opener QUOTES

3 " Although you could open a can of soup with a hammer, a stone, or even your teeth if you didn’t mind making a mess or chipping a tooth, a much wiser approach would be to use a can opener. The breath is like a can opener for the soul. Can you explore the depths of your being without conscious breathing? Sure. The more relevant question is, why would you want to? "

4 " My recommendation is to keep up the good work. I’m changing your title to senior executive assistant, and giving you a three percent raise effective next payday. Congratulations.”
Wow, three percent. I could move up that early retirement plan to age seventy-five now, instead of eighty. Lucky me.
Thank you,” I said. “That’s very generous.”
You’re quite welcome.” Ms. Saunders nodded and grabbed a gold-plated letter opener to begin attacking her stack of mail.
I turned to leave. Didn’t want to outstay my welcome.
Damn it!” she exclaimed, and I turned back around. She winced and nodded at the letter opener that she’d dropped to her desktop. “Damn thing slipped. I’m probably going to need stitches now. Can you be a dear and fetch the first-aid kit for me?”
She held her left index finger and frowned at the steady flow of blood oozing out. A few small drops of red splashed onto the other letters spread out on the desk.
I felt woozy. And suddenly dizzy.
I blinked.
When I opened my eyes, I was no longer standing by the door about to leave. I was crouched down next to Ms. Saunders’s imported black leather chair, grasping her wrist tightly…… and sucking noisily on her fingertip.
I shrieked and let go of her, staggering backward. I grabbed at her desk to keep from falling, but I dropped on my butt, anyhow, taking most of the contents of the top of her desk with me.
She held her injured finger far away from her and stared at me, wide-eyed, with a mixture of shock and disgust.
I scrambled to my feet and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
What in the holy hell just happened?
I… I… uh… I’m so sorry,” I managed. “I don’t know what… I wouldn’t normally do something… I just…”
Ms. Saunders pulled her hand close to her chest, perhaps to protect it from further abuse.
Get out,” she said quietly.
Yeah, I’ll get back to work. Again, I’m so, so sorry. Would you like me to bring you a cup of coffee?”
No, not to your desk,” she said evenly, but her volume increased with every word. “Get out of here, you freak. I don’t care what you’ve heard, I’m not into women. You’re fired. Now get out of here before I call security.”
But… my job review—”
Get out!” she yelled. "

― Michelle Rowen , Bitten & Smitten (Immortality Bites, #1)

5 " Cats will amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw. "

― Terry Pratchett , Men at Arms (Discworld, #15; City Watch #2)

6 " Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw. Men made dogs, they took wolves and gave them human things--unnecessary intelligence, names, a desire to belong, and a twitching inferiority complex. All dogs dream wolf dreams, and know they're dreaming of biting their Maker. Every dog knows, deep in his heart, that he is a Bad Dog... "

― Terry Pratchett , Men at Arms (Discworld, #15; City Watch #2)

7 " And I *know* I wrote in the above that I hate biographies and reviews that focus on the psychological, surface detail, especially when they pertain to women writers, because I think it’s really about the cult of the personality, which is essentially problematic, and I think simplistically psychologizing which biographies are so wont to do is really problematic, and dangerous, especially when dealing with complicated women who just by being writers at a certain time and age were labelled as nonconformist, or worse, hysterical or ill or crazy, and I think branding these women as femme fatales is all so often done. And I know in a way I’m contributing to this by posting their bad-ass photos, except hopefully I am humanizing them and thinking of them as complicated selves and intellects AND CELEBRATING THEM AS WRITERS as opposed to straight-up objectifying. One particular review long ago in Poetry that really got my goat was when Brian Phillips used Gertrude Stein’s line about Djuna Barnes having nice ankles as an opener in a review of her poetry, and to my mind it was meant to be entirely dismissive, as of course, Stein was being as well. Stein was many important revolutionary things to literature, but a champion of her fellow women writers she was not. They published my letter, but then let the guy write a reply and scurry to the library and actually read Nightwood, one of my all-time, all-times, and Francis Bacon’s too, there’s another anecdote. And it’s burned in my brain his response, which was as dismissive and bourgeois as the review. I don’t remember the exact wordage, but he concluded by summing up that Djuna Barnes was a minor writer. Well, fuck a duck, as Henry Miller would say. And that is how the canon gets made. "

― Kate Zambreno

8 " Dogs are a really amazing eye opener for us humans because their lives are compressed into such a short period, so we can see them go from puppyhood to adolescence to strong adulthood and then into their sunset years in 10 to 12 years. It really drives home the point of how finite all our lives are. "