Quotes About Quotations

The taste for quotations (and for the juxtaposition of incongruous quotations) is a Surrealist taste.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

My skull is crammed with quotations.

Oh, I don't read. I skulk about in search of quotations that might make me appear educated.

In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall.

I'd lived by quotations, practically all my life.

History is not just about dates and quotations. And it's not just about politics, the military and social issues, though much of it of course is about that. It's about everything. It's about life history. It's human. And we have to see it that way. We have to teach it that way. We have to read it that way. It's about art, music, literature, money, science, love - the human experience.

Luminous quotations, also, atone, by their interest, for the dulness of an inferior book, and add to the value of a superior work by the variety which they lend to its style and treatment.

On the analogy of 'Dictionary Johnson,' we call Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the just-published Yale Book of Quotations (well worth the $50 price), 'Quotationeer Shapiro.' Shapiro does original research, earning his 1,067-page volume a place on the quotation shelf next to Bartlett's and Oxford's.