'Defoe and Richardson are the first great writers in our literature who did not take their plots from mythology, history, legend or previous literature. In this they differ from Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, for instance, who, like the writers of Greece and Rome, habitually used traditional plots; and who did so, in the last analysis, because they accepted the general premise of their times that, since Nature is essentially complete and unchanging, its records, whether scriptural, legendary or historical, constitute a definitive repertoire of human experience.'

- not written by a computer programmer.

'New, we confess, and by no means happy, is our condition: if you want the aid of our labor, we ourselves stand in greater want of the labor. We are miserable with inaction. We perish of rest and rust: but we do not like your work.'

(singing) 'gonna eat your brains and gain your knowledge'

'Hey, you wanna get drunk?'

'Nah, there's too many phones in here.'

Last night I sat in front of a loud racist who was drunk and overwhelmed by the unfamiliar experience of riding the bus.

'This is the species of the sublime for which the sight of the boundless prairies of the interior of North America is renowned.'

Today the bus passed an apartment building, from a third story window of which a woman was waving while holding a big black cat. I feel confident that she was saying 'bye bye, bus!' to the cat.

'He who hears blasphemy nowadays is not obliged to rend his garments, because otherwise his garments would be nothing but tatters.'

'She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.'