“The Singular Mark Twain [by Fred Kaplan] arouses in the reader an urgently fugitive instinct, as at the approach of an unpolished yet tenacious raconteur.”
Christopher Hitchens panning the book in The Atlantic Monthly November 2003
“It takes 20 years to make an overnight success.”
Eddie Cantor, according to www.brainyquote.com/quotes/eddie_cantor_309843
“’I remember back on the farm... my mother calling to me... “Jon, you’re boring the cattle!” Ever see a cow yawn?’ ‘Now you’re boring the cat.’”
Dialogue with Jon talking then Garfield thinking in Garfield cartoon in Ottawa Citizen May 16, 2002
“A really boring remark or conversation is a said-ative.”
Me July 9, 2004.
“Nearly every line he penned was an invitation to slumber.”
Bill Bryson A Short History of Nearly Everything (about “Geological writer James Hutton”)
“Boredom would be a relief after the emotion I’m experiencing now.”
Another of mine (hey, use it or lose it) from March 2004.
“If you don’t knit, bring a book.”
“Dorothy Parker’s advice” for surviving something terminally dull, quoted by John Ivison in National Post February 22, 2005
“Apathy is a big problem, and it’s getting bigger all the time. To make matters worse, nobody gives a d*mn.”
“Charlie McKenzie, former campaign chairman, Rhinoceros Party, quoted in the Nov. 29th Globe and Mail” according to quoted in Overview Vol. 25, #4 (Winter 2000)