Friday, December 26, 2008

He Really Said That? 2008 Quotes

Okay, the reality is that there may be like 6 people reading La Bloga on the day after Christmas, and 3 of them are here in my house. Still, it's my turn, so I had to come up with something. I decided to use someone's else's words. Here are a few quotes from 2008. Seems like an easy way to reflect and look forward at the same time. The reasons I chose these particular quotes are as varied as the snowflakes that did not fall on North Denver on Christmas Day; I'll just say that when I read them I thought they were interesting enough to copy and paste. I avoided the more obvious and infamous quotes from Jesse Jackson and Sarah Palin, for example, but I'm sure you've heard some of these already.


"If Jesus came back today, I think he'd throw up." -- Former Gov. Jesse Ventura.

"I know I'm ugly, but I need love like everyone else." -- Yu Zhenhuan, the world's hairiest man.

"How did Bush go from being an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?" -- Oliver Stone.

"I think that, in retrospect, I could have used a different rhetoric. Phrases such as 'bring them on' or 'dead or alive' indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace." -- George W Bush.

"We have to do something about his [Obama's] skinny legs. He has to do squats." -- Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"I've been sleeping like a baby: sleep two hours, wake up and cry, sleep two hours, wake up and cry." -- John McCain in his first interview after his electoral defeat.

"Artists have said that New Mexico's biggest asset is the color of the mornings and evenings. It spurs creativity." -- Bill Richardson.

"'Find him,' the alien said. 'Find the man who killed me.' I sat on the alien's bed. We were on the second floor of a cheap motel in Sarasota, Florida. To get up the stairs I had to get past three hookers, their pimp, and a blind man selling pot - for medicinal purposes only, of course." Mario Acevedo, The Undead Kama Sutra.

"While we're still the US sales leader, we acknowledge we have disappointed you." -- General Motors, in full-page ad in Automotive News.

“I remember going to a huge waterfall on a glacier in Iceland. People were there on a rock-platform overlook to see it. They had their kids. There was a place that wasn't sealed off, but it had a cable that stopped anybody from going past a certain point. I said to myself, you know, in the States they'd have that hurricane-fenced off, because they're afraid somebody's gonna fall and some lawyer's going to appear. There, the mentality was like it was in America in the old days: If you fall, you're stupid.” Clint Eastwood.

"I only eat so that I can smoke and stay alive." -- Harry Dean Stanton.

"No anthology can give a complete picture of its theme because that would require a book of infinite pages. This is particularly true with this volume, which draws its stories from a wildly diverse group of people who can be loosely categorized under the umbrella of 'Latinos' and who live in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. But if I had one goal in editing this anthology, it was to bring together some of the best contemporary Latino fiction about my home." Daniel Olivas, Preface to Latinos in Lotusland.


¡Próspero Año Nuevo! Don't let the sum-na-beeches get you down.

Later.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

They really said that?
Mr. #7

Daniel A. Olivas said...

Hey, I guess I'm one of the six reading today...actually, everyone is on vacation so you will have a large audience today. Thank you for including a quote from me but, personally, I like Harry Dean Stanton's quote the best. By the way, I just started reading Moacyr Scliar's "The Strange Nation of Rafael Mendes: A Novel" (Harmony Books, 1987), upon the recommendation of a fellow attorney in my office. What a wild ride of a book! What are you reading? Onward to 2009!

msedano said...

have we just witnessed the start of a new annual tradition for La Bloga? Only time will tell.

Happy boxing day!

mvs

Joe said...

Saludos from Dallas, TX, I guess I am reader #8. Have a safe New Years

janna said...

Fun post, the quotes made me laugh out loud, and reminded me that I've been meaning to read Latinos in Lotusland, and that sounds like a good way to spend part of my vacation. ¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Manuel Ramos said...

Thanks for the comments - keep your cards and letters coming. We love to hear from our readers.

Daniel - I'm currently reading more Bolaño, of course, (I can't get enough of that guy, yet) and a couple of detective novels by new writers Virgil Jose and A.E. Roman. I intend to jump into 2009 with reviews of these books and maybe interviews with the authors - we'll see. I don't know Scliar - but if you think it's wild, then it must be worth checking out. I couldn't sleep the other night so I picked up A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat by Rimbaud - that little collection managed to keep me up all the rest of the night. Talk about wild - what a life that guy led.

Daniel A. Olivas said...

Here's the Wikipedia entry for Scliar:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moacyr_Scliar

BestViewInBrooklyn said...

Thanks for these 2008 quotations; in a lot of ways, they sum up the year nicely. They'll make me sound so well-read, at least in trivia.