"The answer is simple:  feed the poor, clothe the naked, and heal the sick.”

—King (1983)

"Surprising though it may sound, the most pernickety professional clockmakers are by no means averse to washing the mechanism in water."
—Michel Doussy, The Art of Restoring Antiques (1978)

"No real idea can be said to exist without the words made to measure." —Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I can't picture you astride one of those big beasts."
—Carolyn LeComte, Dark Paradise

A possible motto for a weight loss support group:

"There is only the finest line between collecting and compulsion.  More than half the people you see shopping at flea markets have serious psychiatric disorders and don't even know it." —Matt Maranian, Pad: The Guide to Ultra-Living (2000)

Author Miracle Jones releases his fictions on flash drives attached to little sculptures.  "I envision that someday even lamps and toasters will be filled with fiction, comics, and movies," he says.  "Top hats will contain whole worlds!"  Jones promises that tomorrow's bookcase will be filled with exquisitely crafted talismans.  See his intriguing explanation here.

"It may be said, we do not become wood when we know wood.  The answer, surprising though it may sound, is that in so far as we know wood we do become it."
—The Downside Review (1936)

"There is no guarantee that we will succeed at whatever we attempt to do, but we should still fully engage our energies in living in the present because this split-second moment in time is our only certainty."
—Alexandra Stoddard, Things Good Mothers Know (2009)

 

"Is all the mythology in the world here?"
"No . . . Only words are here.  They try to make me yield the rest but my words come from the North Country.  They can't be pinned down between book covers.  Our words like to play on the breeze.  They congregate in the hollows of streams and fill the ravines."
—Robin Llywelyn, From Empty Harbour to White Ocean

Is it true, as Momus suggests, that there are "few tales which would not be improved by the addition of the phrase 'suddenly, a shot rang out'"?  Decide for yourself as we alter the opening lines of . . .

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James

She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him.  Suddenly, a shot rang out.

"Surprising though it may sound, you often have to audition even just to get into a good acting class."
—S.J. Stratford, Arts and Entertainment

"The answer is:  simple machines.”

—John Farndon, Experimenting with Physics (2008)

"Before making judgments which will affect the environment and other people, it is vital to reconstruct a map's 'missing essence.'  The best way to do so is through imaginative map use."
—Phillip Muehrcke & Juliana O. Muehrcke, Map Use (1998)

Pictured is a "map's essence," photographed by Dorian Cavé.  See full image here.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook: