Quotation [occasional]

“The only thing memorable about Sex and the City 2 is the number two part, which describes it totally, if you get my drift. Everything else in this deadly, brainless exercise in pointless tedium is dedicated to the screeching audacity of delusional self-importance that convinces these people the whole world is waiting desperately to watch two hours and 25 minutes of platform heels, fake orgasms and preposterous clothes. It is to movies what fried dough is to nutrition.” — Rex Reed, The New York Observer

Quotation [occasional]

"Any driver who says he loved the 'Ring was either lying, or not driving quickly enough."
Jackie Stewart

Quotation [occasional]

I don't want to live in a world where Scott Brown's daughters are available but affordable healthcare isn't.
-- Andy Borowitz, on Twitter

Quotation [occasional]

"Democracy and Parliament are not being sidestepped — they are only being suspended"
Brent Rathgeber, Conservative MP

Quotation [occasional]

"This cat does more for the war effort than you do. He acts as a hot water bottle and saves fuel and power"
Winston Churchill to Rab Butler, referring to nelson his cat.

Quotation [occasional]

"This kid, if it was up to me, wouldn't be allowed to walk blind people on the sidewalk. It's such yobbish behaviour from which he has also benefited, because, like he says in his sworn statement, he did it so he would get a contract renewal for 2009, and he will be paid until the end of the year. [...] He is a silly kid who doesn't know if he has pushed the throttle or not, because it's no coincidence that he's had 17 accidents since he's been at Renault."

Carlos Gracia

Quotation [occasional]

My center is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack.
-Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929), most likely apocryphal.

Quotation [occasional]

[A]s a famous paper by Kruger and Sunning showed, people who are bad at what they do are generally also incapable of understanding that they suck--and this directly contributes to inflated self-perception. So, incompetence tends to make people cocky and people prefer cocky judgements over demonstrated expertise, which is pretty much the worst of both worlds.
- Kieran Healy

Quotation [occasional]

"There are a lot of Ass shots in this film."
- A friend discussing the cinematography in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Quotation [occasional]

If the bulk of American sf could be said to be written by robots, about robots, for robots, then the bulk of English fantasy seems to be written by rabbits, about rabbits and for rabbits.
-Epic Pooh by Michael Moorcock

Quotation [occasional]

No doubt the author intends such remarks to convey the horrors of the Holocaust, but “The Kindly Ones” instead reads like a pointless compilation of atrocities and anti-Semitic remarks, pointlessly combined with a gross collection of sexual fantasies. That such a novel should win two of France’s top literary prizes is not only an example of the occasional perversity of French taste, but also a measure of how drastically literary attitudes toward the Holocaust have changed in the last few decades.
- Michiko Kakutani on The Kindly Ones.

Quotation [occasional]

"Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents."
- President Barack Obama

Quotation [occasional]

But for inspired badness, this recent "photograph"* by Annie Leibovitz for the Lavazza calendar has it all: a pandering (unto capitulation) to empty style; excessive color which is nevertheless unattractive; an attractive model who is also unattractive (though she got legs! But what the hell is with that expression?); a really woeful idea (Romulus and Remus and their wolf-mother—oh, please) that nevertheless doesn't even work; heavyhanded overproduction; no trace of irony; a blatantly fake background that doesn't even try to match the studio-shot foreground; a baby butt, for that touch of smack-you-with-a-dead-fish cuteness; campy makeup, kitschy hair; and, to top it all off, a hilariously incongruous product placement like an embarrassing pimple.
- Mike

Quotation [occasional]

"If Mr. Harper manages to survive, he'll be a wounded beast. He's made terrible errors in the last eight weeks... The man can't get his story straight, this is not leadership. So, he's wounded, if he escapes this time, then I get a little time to rebuild the Liberal Party, we have some rebuilding to do, then we take him down later. Make no mistake, his days are numbered".
- Michael Ignatieff

Quotation [occasional]

Attention, all 13-year-old female readers of this newspaper: Run, do not walk, to the nearest multiplex playing “Twilight,” the screen version of Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling potboiler about a principled vampire and the teenage girl who loves him. Others needn’t run. Or walk.
-- Wall Street Journal

Quotation [occasional]

"This woman is mad. She's completely mad, and she's in love with her own fictional creation."
--- Robert Pattinson on Stephenie Meyer

Quotation [occasional]

"Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast."

-Anonymous Republican aide quoted in Newsweek

Quotation [occasional]

A crashing, mind-numbing bore. This is the literary equivalent of waterboarding.
- Christopher Buckley on Anne Rice's new book.

Quotation [occasional]

Conservatism has finally crashed on problems for which its doctrines offered no solutions (the economic crisis foremost among them, thus Bush's apostasy) and on its refusal to acknowledge that the "real America" is more diverse, pragmatic and culturally moderate than the place described in Palin's speeches or imagined by the right-wing talk show hosts.

- E.J. Dionne in the Post

Quotation [occasional]

Steve Fuller complains, as do all authors whose books are panned, that I did not read his book properly (or at all). Alas, I did.
- AC Grayling on Steve Fuller