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Pete Rose is too rich a character to fit on a bronze plaque. He requires a good, trenchant, poignant (ah, Petey) book, and this is it.

Roy Blount, Jr.

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Roy Blount, Jr.
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 4
Musician
Writer
Indianapolis
Indiana
Book
Pete
Good
Poignant
Bronze
Requires
Fit
Rose
Rich
Trenchant
Character
Plaque

More quotes by Roy Blount, Jr.

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Ham's substantial, ham is fat. Ham is firm and sound. Ham's what God was getting at When He made pigs so round.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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It was easy to make fun of Bush, but it was sort of like shooting fish in a barrel and it didn't really feel all that good because it was so easy to do. I would much rather live under a thoughtful president. Even if it makes it harder to be funny about politics, it makes it more interesting to be funny about politics.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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Cats have intercepted my footsteps at the ankle for so long that my gait, both at home and on tour, has been compared to that of a man wading through low surf.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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New York walking isn't exercise: it's a continually showing make-your-own movie.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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I've never thought it was necessary to make fun of people - you can find fun in people without necessarily mocking them.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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I think writer's block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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Obama's got a great sense of humor, but mainly he has a great thinking presence, which is uncommon. It's hard to imagine being able to do, think over answers and deliver them on television. If I were president I would constantly be spluttering.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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I heard on public radio recently, there's a thing called Weed Dating. Singles get together in a garden and weed and then they take turns, they keep matching up with other people. Two people will weed down one row and switch over with two other people. It's in Vermont. I don't think I'd be very good at Weed Dating.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. I don't remember what I was like before I learned my ABC's, but for as long as I can remember I have made them with my fingers and felt them in my bones.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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The North isn't a place. It's just a direction out of the South.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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The legendary yet factual Curtis Wilkie has been the right man in the right place at an uncanny number of extraordinary times.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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I am open to the accusation that I see compost as an end it itself. But we do grow some real red damn tomatoes such as you can't get in the stores. And potatoes, beans, lettuce, collards, onions, squash, cauliflower, eggplant, carrots, peppers. Dirt in you own backyard, producing things you eat. Makes you wonder.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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I studied French in high school and German in college and I once took a 24-hour Italian crash course. English has by far the most words in it of any other language. Our money might not be worth anything anymore, but the language is.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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A good heavy book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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When I weed, I like to get off into my own head. For one thing, my wife plants and I have trouble telling which plants are weeds and which are my favorite plants. So I tend to hop around and grab the weeds that I know are weeds. So I don't weed all that linearly. I tend to weed haphazardly.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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Anyone who undertakes the literary grind had better like playing around with words.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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An author is a person who can never take innocent pleasure in visiting a bookstore again.
Roy Blount, Jr.