The great divide

... a dead ringer for Andy Rooney

"A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of  them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: 'Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?'

I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration?, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, 'Can you read?' — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had."

                ... C. P. Snow (1905-80), English physicist and novelist, excerpt from his published essay "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" (1959).

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day ...

Lolita creator

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour)."

 ... Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), Russian-American novelist ... excerpt from his memoir "Speak Memory"

Epitaph for a dead waiter: "God finally caught his eye.”

Dorothy Parker would have been proud

“Do you have any unexpressed thoughts?”

   ,,, comment made to a woman endlessly chattering at a dinner table.

George Kaufman (1889-1961), American playwright,  humorist & social commentator. 

From Here to Eternity

"... we had four tons of grit in our mouths--and other places"

"It had to have rocks in the distance, so the water could strike the boulders and shoot upward -- all very symbolic. The scene turned out to be deeply affecting on film, but, God, it was no fun to shoot. We had to time it for the waves, so that at just the right moment a big one would come up and wash over us. Most of the waves came up only to our feet, but we needed one that would come up all the way. We were like surfers, waiting for the perfect waves. Between each take, we had to do a total cleanup. When it was all over, we had four tons of grit in our mouths--and other places".

                ... Deborah Kerr (1921-2007), referring to her famous romantic beach scene with Burt Lancaster (1913-94) in "From Here to Eternity" in 1953.