Ever thought about how "ooh" and "aah" are ubiquitous backing vocal phonemes, but "ayy" and "eee" and short "a" (as in "hat") are rarely if ever heard? If you want to entertain yourself during a commute, try imagining '50s or '60s pop songs with some of these "alternate vowel sound" backing vocals. One particularly appealing image for me is a chorus of Fonzies singing "ayyy"s behind "Don't Worry Baby".

Johnny spun to face a bookcase of art criticism and wondered desperately if K came before or after N.  The alphabet, a pillar, a solace and a certainty since kindergarten, had suddenly deserted him.  He stood, bewildered and staring, as if he’d suffered a crisis of faith.  Does the alphabet exist?  If the alphabet exists, why is there so much suffering in the world?  The alphabet is dead.
—Cathleen Schine, The Love Letter

Inventing deodorants is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

There is no such thing as superfluous praise.

A true friend does not reveal the song which is stuck in his head.

Every morning I leave the house determined not to let Life make a monkey of me. But I always carry a banana in my bag, just in case.

If you want to have ice cream at the party, bring ice cream to the party.

So many questions, so many question marks.

Advice to coffee drinkers: Don't put all your filters in one basket.

The pessimist says the glass is half empty. The optimist says the glass is half full. The optometrist says you need a new pair of glasses.

Behind every successful sock puppet is an otherwise idle right or left hand.

Monday's dessert is Tuesday's appetizer.

Remember never to rely on memory.

A good magician never explains his jokes.

Huckleberry Finnegans Wake. A plucky lad and a runaway slave fall asleep
on a raft in the stream of consciousness.

Inherit the Wind in the Willows. A mole, a rat, and a toad are brought
to trial by weasels for daring to believe in evolution.

Moby-Dick-and-Jane. "Look, Ishmael! See Dick breach. Breach, Dick, breach!"

All animals are famous for 15 minutes,
but some are more famous than others.

—George Warhol, author of Animal Farm
and leader of pop art movement.

God gave a loaf to Mr. Scrooge,
But just a crumb to me.

—Emily Dickens, author of "Because I Could not
Stop for Death" and A Christmas Carol.

It's perfectly easy to confuse Socrates with Groucho Marx, but how often do we actually take the time to do it?

A midnight invitation to step in for a cup of cocoa is a nice treat -- with or without the cocoa.

Where there's a curd, there's a whey.

An executive who fields her own phone calls has a fool for a receptionist.

Clutter is the niece of inspiration.

The night belongs to raccoons.

Reciprocity is a two-way street.

A writer may be self-employed, but she is at the beck and call of thousands of insistent little words.

A yuppie is someone who doesn't know he's eating rye bread until he gets a caraway seed stuck in his teeth.

The clock with a quiet tick advances just as quickly.

The problem with being frivolous is that no one takes you seriously.

I must be on my way. I have a lot of important dawdling to do.

The theater is no place for histrionics.

I claim no expertise, only a knack for groundless opinions.

My plans are never foolproof, only fool-resistant.

The beaujolais was so pretentious that when I sniffed the cork, it sniffed back.

One of these days, I shall slough off this phony accent and assume a genuine accent.

I like The Importance of Being Earnest so much that I've worn out three pairs of glasses re-reading it. And I don't even wear glasses.

I wouldn't mind working all day, if only it didn't take all day to do it.

I live in fear of being called out on my inappropriate use of the majestic semicolon, that someone will notice it and realize that I do not even have a grade school-level education in punctuation and grammar. Sure, I may have nearly gone to the National Spelling Bee when I was 11, but I cannot form a proper sentence.

[ . . .]

In the end, however, I think I would prefer it if no one spoils the mystery for me. I will sleep more easily at night (The Guy Snoring Above Me notwithstanding) knowing that there is yet a little magic in the world, something I cannot explain.

The broken thought is finishing; the thought is done.

He could not handle the embrace; he would have cried and shaken.

The thing you search for is here; you search for spiraling punctuation.

The semicolon “signals that you’re not expressing a singular thought”, explains the prolific cultural critic, Chris Lehmann. “It signals that there’s tension, that there is some contradictory evidence - and you [have to] sort of trust readers to be able to deal with that, which most editors don’t and many writers don’t.” Menand locates this fear of complexity in the idea that language should do no more than hold up a mirror to the world. “If you subscribe to linguistic transparency, there’s a bias in favour of simplicity,” he says.

[...]

It may seem bizarre to read so much into a stop on the page, but the semicolon is a pause for ambiguity, amusement, complexity, doubt, and nuance. If writing lacks these “genteel” qualities, can we be all that surprised if it is either as dull as a computer manual, or as demagogic as a soapbox on Hyde Park Corner?

Semicolon and I are best of friends, but that wasn't always the case. When I was in highschool--and I shudder to think of this--I actually said "the semicolon is a superfluous punctuation mark; any old parasitic semicolon can be replaced with a respectable period," if not in so many words (or punctuation marks!). Since then, I've come to appreciate the level of nuance that the semicolon makes possible. Semicolon and I are inseperable . . .

Game officials who finally got that semi-colon said they never saw anything like it.  Said it was like something out of one of those extra-large-print books for old people.  I was like, no shit:  I saw the mother.  With punctuation like that out there, you'd be safer going to Africa to hunt exclamation marks.  People see a semi-colon, they laugh.  Because a semi-colon looks harmless.  Well, go ask Charlie how harmless they are.  Go ask Charlie.

It is not easy to write with dispassion of the odious semicolon, but let me try: Except for its function in one copy-editing circumstance, the semicolon is worthless.  It is the most pusillanimous, sissified, utterly useless mark of punctuation ever invented.  Sensitive editors should abolish it forthwith. Forthwith! [...]  The semicolon is a belly-up guppie in a tank of glorious Siamese fighting fish.  It's girly.  It is not just probably the most useless of all forms of punctuation.  It is absolutely, positively the most useless of all such marks ever invented.