Given these outstanding accomplishments, much now depends on the level of performance of the Grim Reaper. Can he be counted on to do the job? Mortuary management was gloomy on this score, noting that due to medical advances in the treatment of cancer and heart disease, the death rate was bound to decline. Not so the brokerage houses and investment analysts. The Goldman Sachs brokerage house, analyzing their prospects, predicts a rosy future: "Aggregate deaths have increased at roughly 1.1 percent on a compound basis since 1940. . . . Going forward, the continued aging of the baby-boomers, coupled with an increasing proportion of people over age 65, should keep aggregate deaths rising. . . . The aging of America should enable the death care industry to experience extremely stable demand in the future."

—Jessica Mitford, The American Way of Death

The patriotic theme comes through very strong, finding its most eloquent expression in the Batesville Casket Company's "Valley Forge," designed to reflect the tugged, strong, soldierlike qualities associated with that historic theme. "Its charm lies in the warm beauty of the natural grain and finish of the finest maple hardwoods. A casket designed indeed for a soldier—one that symbolizes the solid, dependable, courageous American ideals so bravely tested at Valley Forge." For all its soldierlike qualities, it looks most comfortable, with its nice beige pillow and sheets. On the wall behind it hangs a portrait of George Washington, who is looking, as usual, rather displeased.

—Jessica Mitford, The American Way of Death

Suddenly, fifteen minutes after the prince left, Aglaya came running down to the terrace from upstairs, and in such a hurry that she did not even wipe her eyes, which were wet with tears. She came running down because Kolya arrived and brought a hedgehog. They all started looking at the hedgehog; to their questions, Kolya explained that the hedgehog was not his, and that he was now walking with his comrade, another schoolboy, Kostya Lebedev, who had stayed outside and was embarrassed to come in because he was carrying an axe; that they had bought both the hedgehog and the axe from a peasant they had met. The peasant was selling the hedgehog and took fifty kopecks for it, and then they persuaded him to sell the axe as well, because it was an opportunity, and also a very good axe. Here Aglaya suddenly began pestering Kolya terribly to sell her the hedgehog at once, turned inside out, even called Kolya "dear." Kolya would not agree for a long time, but finally gave in and called Kostya Lebedev, who indeed came in carrying the axe and feeling very embarrassed. But here it suddenly turned out that the hedgehog did not belong to them at all, but to t third boy, Petrov, who had given them money to buy Schlosser's History from some fourth boy, who, being in need of money, was selling it at a bargain price; that they set out to buy Schlosser's History, but could not help themselves and bought the hedgehog, and therefore both the hedgehog and the axe belonged to that third boy, to whom they were now taking them in place of Schlosser's History. But Aglaya pestered them so much that they finally decided to sell her the hedgehog. As soon as Aglaya got the hedgehog, she put it into a wicker basket with Kolya's help, covered it with a napkin, and started asking Kolya to go at once and, without stopping anywhere, take the hedgehog to the prince on her behalf, with the request that he accept it as "a token of her profoundest respect." Kolya gladly agreed and promised to deliver it, but immediately began to pester her: "What was the meaning of the hedgehog and of such a present?" Aglaya replied that that was none of his business. He replied that he was sure it contained some allegory. Aglaya became angry and snapped at him that he was a little brat and nothing more. Kolya at once retorted that if it were not for his respect for the woman in her, and for his own convictions on top of it, he would immediately prove to her that he knew how to respond to such insults. It ended, however, with Kolya delightedly going all the same to deliver the hedgehog, and Kostya Lebedev running after him; Aglaya could not help herself and , seeing Kolya swinging the basket too hard, shouted behind him from the terrace: "Please, Kolya dearest, don't drop it!"—as if she had not just quarreled with him; Kolya stopped and, also as if he had not just been quarreling, shouted with great readiness: "No, I won't drop it, Aglaya Ivanova. Be completely assured!" and ran on at breakneck speed. After that Aglaya laughed terribly and ran to her room extremely pleased, and then was very cheerful all day.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

It would reach the point where the most trifling things would anger Lizaveta Prokofyevna terribly and put her beside herself. Alexandra Ivanova liked, for instance, to sleep long hours and usually had many dreams; but her dreams were always distinguished by a sort of extraordinary emptiness and innocence—suitable for a seven-year-old child; and so even the innocence of her dreams began for some reason to annoy her mother. Once Alexandra Ivanova saw nine hens in a dream, and this caused a formal quarrel between her and her mother—why?—it is difficult to explain.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

"I often discuss and argue with him, always about similar thoughts, gentlemen; but most often he produces such absurdities that one's ears fall off, not a groatsworth of plausibility!"

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

The earlier gentleman with the fists even considered himself offended, once the "petitioner" was accepted into the company and, being taciturn by nature, merely growled now and then like a bear and looked with profound scorn upon the fawning and facetiousness of the "petitioner," who turned out to be a worldly and politic man. By the looks of him, the lieutenant promised to succeed in "the business" more by adroitness and dodging than by strength, being also of smaller stature than the fist gentleman. Delicately, without getting into an obvious argument, but boasting terribly, he had already hinted more than once at the advantages of English boxing; in short, he turned out to be a pure Westernizer. At the word "boxing," the fist gentleman merely smiled scornfully and touchily, and without condescending, for his part, to an obvious debate with his rival, displayed now and then, silently, as if accidentally, or, better to say, exposed to view now and then, a perfectly national thing—a huge fist, sinewy, gnarled, overgrown with a sort of reddish fuzz—and everyone could see clearly that if this profoundly national thing were aptly brought down on some object, there would be nothing left but a wet spot.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

Art-making and parenthood act very efficiently as disincentives to one another, and people who say otherwise are deluded, or childless, or men.

—Claire Dederer, Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

Dalí's rediscovered Catholicism had yet to produce the fruit of humility. "Now the new era of mystic painting," the Mystical Manifesto concludes, "begins with me." He took his own name to mean he was the "savior" of painting.

—Matthew J. Milliner, "Chagall's Cathedral," in Cameron Anderson ed., God in the Modern Wing

Anyway, I'm not summarizing Stendahl's ideas about love and crystallization that carefully, because I mostly present them to abuse them for my own purposes.

—BDM, "My Crank Theory of Cultural Longevity"

Waugh is a classic in the venerable tradition of the English eccentric, with hair flying up wildly around a bald crown like an electrocuted scientist.

—Elizabeth Winkler, Shakespeare was a Woman and Other Heresies

Conceived as a replacement for religion, English was institutionalized at the height of the Victorian deification of Shakespeare, swapping the old Judeo-Christian God for one that Britain had ready at hand. "An institution," Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, "is the lengthened shadow of one man." And the Academic institution of English literature, as the scholar Nancy Glazener writes, can be understood as a shadow cast by Shakespeare, though this shadow is "an effect of Shakespeare's having been positioned and lit retrospectively."

—Elizabeth Winkler, Shakespeare was a Woman and Other Heresies

Stratford lies two hours northwest of London in the British midlands. Fittingly, this is more or less the heart of England. For the truly devout, there is a waymarked footpath between London and Stratford, "Shakespeare's Way," intended to approximate the route he might have taken to and from his hometown. Passing up the opportunity to squelch my feet in Shakespeare's hallowed footsteps, I caught the train from London's Marleybone Station.

—Elizabeth Winkler, Shakespeare was a Woman and Other Heresies

Like other theological disputes, the authorship dispute is over origins: Where did these works come from? What circumstances, influences, and qualities of mind made them possible? What was this genius from which they emanated? Seeing the origin of the works in the man from Stratford, traditionalists are, in the terminology of the dispute, Stratfordians—defenders of the faith; orthodox believers in the one true church. The heretics banging their ninety-five theses against the church door are anti-Stratfordians—against Stratford as the origin—but their quest for truth has splintered them into sects, sometimes warring but loosely affiliated under the sign of their dissent from orthodoxy: Baconians, Marlovians, Oxfordians, Sidneyans, Nevillians, and others, each named according to their god.

—Elizabeth Winkler, Shakespeare was a Woman and Other Heresies

Looking around for a publisher, Looney found one who offered to pay him a substantial sum but only on condition that he adopted a pseudonym. Such a heretical theory could not possibly be put forward under the unfortunate name of Looney.

—Elizabeth Winkler, Shakespeare was a Woman and Other Heresies

To be modern in the 1990s means to be old-fashioned.

—Colleen McDaniel," Marketing Jesus: Warner Press and the Art of Warner Sallman," in David Morgan ed., Icons of American Protestantism

"Anyway, Picasso's ugly, and he paints a hideously deformed world because his soul is hideous, and that's all you can say about Picasso. There's no reason anymore to support the exhibition of his works. He has nothing to contribute, and with him there's no light, no innovation in the organization of colors or forms. I mean, in Picasso's work there's absolutely nothing that deserves attention, just an extreme stupidity and a priapic daubing that might attract a few sixtysomethings with big bank accounts."

—Michel Houellenbecq, The Map and the Territory

"But the problem of the visual arts, it seems to me," he continued hesitantly, "is the abundance of subjects. For example, I could readily consider this radiator as a valid subject for a picture." Houellenbecq turned round quickly to look suspiciously at the radiator, as if it were going to jump with joy at the idea of being painted.

—Michel Houellenbecq, The Map and the Territory

Down below in the boiler the rats were stirring. The busy patter upstairs had made them curious. The footfalls of the children, light and quick, made them pause and look at one another. They began to quiver and gibber. Then on a signal from their captain they poured forth from the boiler and came slithering up the cellar stairs in a column to see what was going on. In the kitchen they met a horde of cockroaches who had emerged from their dark ruins, led by a big bull roach. They too had been disturbed by the new vibrations.

—Charles Portis, Masters of Atlantis

"When he was trying to get his patent, I took him up to Long Beach and introduced him to a good lawyer name of Welch. Rod had an interest in a denture factory in Tijuana and he was trying to get a U.S. patent on their El Tigre model. They were wonderful teeth. They had two extra canines and two extra incisors of tungsten steel. Slap a set of those Tiger plates in your mouth and you can throw your oatmeal out the window. You could shred an elk steak with those boogers."

—Charles Portis, The Dog of the South

"It's amazing what people will do. Look at the ancient Egyptians. They were some of the smartest people the world has ever known—we still don't know all their secrets—and yet they worshipped a tumblebug."

—Charles Portis, The Dog of the South