James Lileks Quotes

Quotes about:

• We always ask where the time went. We never ask where it's coming from.

  James Lileks

  Asks

  9 Copy quote

• Modern death is a matter of bright rooms and hard machines. Live long enough, and you might be filed away in a nursing home, your history scoured away, your life winnowed down to a few items on the table and some pictures of people who don't come around enough. When you are about to pass on, there is no quiet to attend you: busy fuss and professional zeal strive to bring you back, nail you to the soft cross of the rented bed.

  James Lileks

  Death, Home, Nursing

  5 Copy quote

• Genius flames and dies, but amiable competence can live forever.

  James Lileks

  Flames, Forever, Genius

  6 Copy quote

• If the "rich" were swarming into poor neighborhoods and beating the poor until they coughed up the dimes they swallowed for safekeeping, yes, this would be a transfer of income from the poor to the rich. But allowing taxpayers to keep more of their money does not qualify as taking it from the poor - unless you believe that the poor have a moral claim to the money other people earn.

  James Lileks

  Believe, Poor Neighborhoods, People

  5 Copy quote

• I don't believe in the very concept of "first thing in the morning." I'm a "third thing in the afternoon" fellow.

  James Lileks

  Morning, Believe, Afternoon

  5 Copy quote

• The worst thing about depression isn't the sense that you're accentuating the negative, it's that you're seeing things the way they really are, stripped of the illusions you use every day to divert yourself from the Yawning Maw of Futility. It's the wind that blows off the snow and reveals the stone.

  James Lileks

  Blow, Yawning, Wind

  4 Copy quote

• All you need to know about Arafat was that he insisted on wearing a pistol when he addressed the UN General Assembly. And all you need to know about the UN, I suppose, is that they let him.

  James Lileks

  Needs, Politics, Pistols

  4 Copy quote

• I'll start drinking tea over coffee when the big hand is on Never and the little hand is on Ain't Gonna Happen.

  James Lileks

  Drinking, Coffee, Hands

  4 Copy quote

• The newspaper is a lecture. The Web is a conversation.

  James Lileks

  Lectures, Newspapers, Conversation

  5 Copy quote

• There are three stages to a man's life. 1. He laughs at Clark Griswold. 2. He sympathizes deeply with Clark Griswold. 3. He laughs at Clark Griswold.

  James Lileks

  Men, Laughing, Three

  4 Copy quote

• I’ll feel that horrible feeling in my stomach you get when you’ve gone over to the Dark Side. But I’ll be fine. That’s the good thing about the Dark Side. Eventually, your eyes adjust.

  James Lileks

  Eye, Dark, Feelings

  7 Copy quote

• Quietly scuttling Columbus Day sales doesn't mean they are opposed to 15th century Iberian seafarers; it just means They don't want protestors on the sales floor throwing blood on the Calvin Klein hosiery in the name of the anti-imperialistic cause.

  James Lileks

  Mean, Blood, Names

  4 Copy quote

• Calculus destroys self-esteem on contact.

  James Lileks

  Self Esteem, Calculus, Contact

  5 Copy quote

• I want to believe in intelligent design, and hence I am suspicious of anything that seems to confirm my desire to believe.

  James Lileks

  Believe, Intelligent, Design

  4 Copy quote

• When your opponent sets up a straw man, set it on fire and kick the cinders around the stage. Don't worry about losing the Strawperson- American community vote.

  James Lileks

  Men, Fire, Worry

  4 Copy quote

• The al-Qaida cell broken up near Buffalo, N.Y., contains some citizens who also found themselves in Afghanistan, training for the Great All-Around Satan Smiting. Treason? Oh, of course not. They were on a religious pilgrimage and got lost. Happens all the time. I knew a kid who went to Lutheran Bible Camp and turned up six years later in a Christian Identity compound with a shaved head and a Hitler mustache.

  James Lileks

  Christian, Religious, Kids

  4 Copy quote

• What unnerves so many liberals about talk radio? Simple: It's the unapologetic nature of the conversation, the unwavering sense of certainty. Where's the nuance? The shades of gray? We all know truth is a fragile butterfly dancing in and out of shadow and light, and these guys act as though truth is a rhino charging across a sunlit veldt.

  James Lileks

  Butterfly, Simple, Rhinos

  24 Copy quote

• It takes a particularly rarified variety of idiot to look at a Jew-hating fascist with a small mustache - and decide that his opponent is the Nazi.

  James Lileks

  Hate, Mustache, Looks

  5 Copy quote

• Yay Condi Rice. I want her to go to Saudi Arabia, and I want her first words upon getting off the plane to be 'I'll drive.'

  James Lileks

  Arabia, Yay, Want

  4 Copy quote

• I've always wondered if there was a Hezbollah version of minesweeper where you get points for blowing up on your first move.

  James Lileks

  Moving, Hezbollah, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• Look. Every partisan in every party has to learn one thing: Sometimes your people are wrong. To paraphrase an old retort, saying "My party, right or wrong" is like saying "My Kennedy, drunk or sober." Credibility is earned, and standing up and saying "Fie!" now and then reinforces your truthfulness.

  James Lileks

  Party, People, Drunk

  6 Copy quote

• Wait until France gets a hard shot in the nose. Wait until France reacts with some nasty work. They'll get a golf-clap from the chattering class over here and a you-go-girl from Red America. France could nuke an Algerian terrorist camp and the rest of the world would tut-tut for a day, then ask if the missiles France used were for sale. And of course the answer would be oui.

  James Lileks

  Girl, Golf, Class

  9 Copy quote

• A Children’s Museum, however, is more of a Funatorium. You are encouraged to touch things, which is poor training for subsequent museum visitation.

  James Lileks

  Children, Museums, Training

  4 Copy quote

• So now we're after a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a guy-and-gal thing. To the founders, this would have been like an amendment requiring the sun to rise in the east; it would fall under the category of obvious truths that the Constitution need not address.

  James Lileks

  Fall, Guy, East

  4 Copy quote

• The not-quite-sort-of lie works here too - often an ad will announce that "Congressman Johnson voted for a bill that gave tax breaks to companies like Enron." True - although the bill allowed all companies to accelerate depreciation of copying machines. Yes, Enron benefited, but Enron also benefited from the revolution of the Earth around the sun. Hardly an argument to freeze the planet in one spot.

  James Lileks

  Lying, Copying, Machines

  4 Copy quote

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