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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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Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party.
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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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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.
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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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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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That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp.
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.
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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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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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Contemporary American children, if they are old enough to grasp the concept of Santa Claus by Thanksgiving, are able to see through it by December 15th.
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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.
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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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Think about scary movies: There's a fine line between horror and humor.
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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The North isn't a place. It's just a direction out of the South.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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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 do some eccentric dancing.
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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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According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.
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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.