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Anyone who undertakes the literary grind had better like playing around with words.

Roy Blount, Jr.

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Roy Blount, Jr.
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 4
Musician
Writer
Indianapolis
Indiana
Like
Undertakes
Grind
Literary
Playing
Anyone
Words
Around
Better

More quotes by Roy Blount, Jr.

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Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky.
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Obama's the most thoughtful-sounding president I can remember. He seems to be saying what he wants to say, and that is a great relief. He always sounds like he's thinking about what he's saying while he's saying it, and that's a rare thing in politicians.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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People don't necessarily want or need to be done unto as you would have them do unto you. They want to be done unto as they want to be done unto.
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I just think lots of words have physicality. How about the word 'wobble?' You think that's arbitrary? When you say the word 'wince,' you wince. How about that?
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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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If a cat spoke, it would say things like, 'Hey, I don't see the problem here.'
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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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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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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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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Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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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.
Roy Blount, Jr.