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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.

Roy Blount, Jr.

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Roy Blount, Jr.
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 4
Musician
Writer
Indianapolis
Indiana
Meaning
President
Organizations
Father
Grave
Lost
Lesson
Wells
Graves
Well
Organization
Many
Lessons
Early

More quotes by 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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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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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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If a cat spoke, it would say things like, 'Hey, I don't see the problem here.'
Roy Blount, Jr.
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Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky.
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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New York walking isn't exercise: it's a continually showing make-your-own movie.
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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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?
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 picture's worth a thousand words? A library card's worth millions.
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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The North isn't a place. It's just a direction out of the South.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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Certainly people have said a lot of deeply unfortunate and stupid things in Southern accents, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the accent itself.
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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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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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.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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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.
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.