James Lileks Quotes

#1. 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.

James Lileks

#2. As a writer, I find holidays often disturbing, not liberating, in their disruption of tempo, their open-ended time.

Julia Cameron

#3. So now we're after a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a guy-and-gal thing. To the founders, this would have been like an amendment requiring the sun to rise in the east; it would fall under the category of obvious truths that the Constitution need not address.

James Lileks

#4. The American's literature is all about being hot and sexy, inspiring a girl and going to bed with her. It focuses on being a hero, saving lives and surviving last, but it has nothing to do with dignity, serenity.

M.F. Moonzajer

#5. I still have a righteous indignation at injustice, no matter what form it takes. It could be homophobia, it could be white supremacy, male supremacy, imperial arrogance, class subordination or whatever.

Cornel West

#6. Look. Every partisan in every party has to learn one thing: Sometimes your people are wrong. To paraphrase an old retort, saying "My party, right or wrong" is like saying "My Kennedy, drunk or sober." Credibility is earned, and standing up and saying "Fie!" now and then reinforces your truthfulness.

James Lileks

#7. 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.

James Lileks

#8. 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.

James Lileks

#9. 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.

James Lileks

#10. I'll feel that horrible feeling in my stomach you get when you've gone over to the Dark Side. But I'll be fine. That's the good thing about the Dark Side. Eventually, your eyes adjust.

James Lileks

#11. Leave your mark on the world by leaving behind a child who grows up to love and serve the Lord.

Elizabeth George

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

James Lileks

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

James Lileks

#14. The newspaper is a lecture. The Web is a conversation.

James Lileks

#15. The popular Arab imagination is a pliant and inventive thing; it can explain any defeat. It is a compass that always points toward the Jew.

James Lileks

#16. What you teach is the word of man. Man is holy, and the true god, the living god, is man himself. You will have no gods but yourselves; the days in which you believed in other gods end now, they end forever.

Philip K. Dick

#17. I have never read any Tolstoy. I felt badly about this until I read a Bill Simmons column where he confessed that he'd never seen 'The Big Lebowski.' Simmons, it should be pointed out, has seen everything. He said that everyone needs to have skipped at least one great cultural touchstone.

Malcolm Gladwell

#18. 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.

James Lileks

#19. I'll start drinking tea over coffee when the big hand is on Never and the little hand is on Ain't Gonna Happen.

James Lileks

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

James Lileks

#21. It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.

H.L. Mencken

#22. If you ask me, psychopaths are more talented than the rest of us ... but they're still fucking psychopaths.

Jonathan Kellerman

#23. 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.

James Lileks

#24. Some musicians are not great technicians, but they give you a rich point of view.

Nathan Milstein

#25. I want to believe in intelligent design, and hence I am suspicious of anything that seems to confirm my desire to believe.

James Lileks

#26. 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.'

James Lileks

#27. I don't trust a lot of journalists.

Calvin Klein

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

James Lileks

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

James Lileks

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

James Lileks

#31. This dissent isn't going to suppress itself.

James Lileks

#32. The mind forever turns on the lathe of its own contradictions.

James Lileks

#33. 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.

James Lileks

#34. Contempt for the things people choose of their own free will is, at its heart, contempt for free will.

James Lileks

#35. The intersection of Green and Stupid is undoubtedly an American destination, but its sad. Sad.

Stephen King

#36. It's more than unsettling to realize there are large companies out there developing backdoors, exploits and trojans.

Mikko Hypponen

#37. 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.

James Lileks

#38. Bad Men Do What Good Men

Ian Rankin

#39. He'd been convinced that if he could just explain his condition to the city, they would all listen to reason and let him control their lives perfectly.

Brandon Sanderson

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

James Lileks

#41. The happiness promised us in Christ does not consist in outward advantages-such as leading a joyous and peaceful life, having rich possessions, being safe from all harm, and abounding with delights such as the flesh commonly longs after. No, our happiness belongs to the heavenly life!

John Calvin

#42. 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.

James Lileks