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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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Roy Blount, Jr.
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 4
Musician
Writer
Indianapolis
Indiana
Arbitrary
Scholar
According
Relation
Meaning
Word
Linguistics
Scholars
More quotes by Roy Blount, Jr.
When I was a little kid, of course, I was brown all summer. That's because I was free as a bird- nothing to do but catch bugs all day.
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The local groceries are all out of broccoli, loccoli.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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.
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.
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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.
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I do some eccentric dancing.
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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.
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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.
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If a cat spoke, it would say things like, 'Hey, I don't see the problem here.'
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Being president of too many well-meaning organizations put my father into an early grave. The lesson in this was not lost on me.
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Lots of people have expressed consternation that I haven't gotten rid of Southern accent, but I just never saw any reason to lose the flavor that I grew up with. I enjoy saying some things with a Southern accent.
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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.
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Think about scary movies: There's a fine line between horror and humor.
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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.
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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.
Anyone who undertakes the literary grind had better like playing around with words.
Roy Blount, Jr.
Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party.
Roy Blount, Jr.
I've never thought it was necessary to make fun of people - you can find fun in people without necessarily mocking them.
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Vincent van Gogh's mother painted all of his best things. The famous mailed decapitated ear was a figment of the public relations firm engaged by Van Gogh's dealer.
Roy Blount, Jr.
The North isn't a place. It's just a direction out of the South.
Roy Blount, Jr.
