Quotes from James Lileks

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.

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.

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

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.

Ah, if only the best place for storing embryonic stem cells was Yucca Flat.

From Day One the very existence of [Camp Bravo] has been a popcorn hull in the tender gums of the hard left.

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

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.'

Look. Folks. It's simple. If you have poor taste in decorating, don't go nuts in the entryway. Wait until your guests are inside before you spring something unusual on them.

In the early '70s, the nation was afflicted with incurable pattern viruses - small microbes that reproduced and multiplied from a single swatch left on a sofa, and soon covered an entire room.

I love the early hours of the day. It's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.

She was from the wrong side of the tracks no matter how you gerrymandered the town.

What's the deal with putting animal feet on tubs? It's like insisting that all pianos should have tails, or dinner tables should have scrotal sacs. One of the things we like about tubs is their immobility, their general disinclination to bolt out of the room, scramble down the stairs, and make for the woods in a blind feral panic.

It wasn't that I was tired of life, really - just my own. Other people's lives seemed perfectly worthwhile, and only the logistical difficultly of assuming them and the likelihood of being caught kept me from concocting some sort of swap.

I still couldn't imagine that she was really, truly pregnant; maybe this was an hysterical pregnancy. But Sarah was never hysterical. Enthusiastic, yes, ironic on occasion. I couldn't imagine a doctor saying, No, it's just an ironic pregnancy.

So Jane was getting married. Well, more power to her. In fact, let me tighten those straps. Any word from the governor on the pardon? No? All right, then, more power to her.

If you can pick the baby up without him squirting our of your hands like a bar of soap in the shower, he's not oiled up enough.

If Mother had to be told not to shove the entire brick of Ivory up Junior's hindquarters, constipation is the least of his problems.

If you think the '80s were dumber than the '70s, either you weren't there or you weren't paying attention.

She was moving slowly, appearing to come no closer. Perhaps she was losing ground against the earth's rotation.

It's always something when you let other people in your world.

She had shins like fireplugs and hips as wide as an oven door. Her head was stuck directly onto her shoulders with the usual Prussian predilection for omitting the neck, and to watch her turn her head in the direction of Aunt Marvel's yodeling demands for attention was to watch a large and noble owl.

This dissent isn't going to suppress itself.