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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.

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Roy Blount, Jr.
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 4
Musician
Writer
Indianapolis
Indiana
Mother
Painted
Decapitated
Best
Relations
Mailed
Engaged
Figment
Things
Firm
Figments
Famous
Gogh
Relation
Vincent
Ears
Dealer
Public
Vans

More quotes by 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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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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According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.
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 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 do some eccentric dancing.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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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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The North isn't a place. It's just a direction out of the South.
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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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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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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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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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.
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A picture's worth a thousand words? A library card's worth millions.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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The local groceries are all out of broccoli, loccoli.
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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Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky.
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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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.
Roy Blount, Jr.
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That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp.
Roy Blount, Jr.