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AUTHORITY --- AUTHORS
AUTOBIOGRAPHY --- AUTOMOBILES

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AUTHORITY


see: "FORCE"
see: "GOVERNMENT"
see: "LAW"
see: "POLICE"
see: "POWER"
see: "STRENGTH"


Authority intoxicates,
And makes mere sots of magistrates;
The fumes of it invade the brain,
And make men giddy, proud, and vain.
--Samuel Butler (1612—1680)
English poet and satirist.
_Miscellaneous Thoughts_ l. 283

Men in authority will always think that criticism
of their policies is dangerous. They will always
equate their policies with patriotism, and find
critics subversive.
--Henry Steele Commager (1902—1998)
American historian.
_Freedom and Order_ [1966]

Wherever there is authority, there is a
natural inclination to disobedience.
--Thomas C. Haliburton (1796—1865)
Canadian politician, judge, and writer who was best known
as the creator of the literary character, Sam Slick.
_Sam Slick's Wise Saws and Modern Instances_ [2 vol., 1853]

Mankind are apt to be strongly prejudiced in favor
of whatever is countenanced by antiquity, enforced
by authority, and recommended by custom.
--Robert Hall (1764—1831)
English minister and orator.
Attributed in Maturin M. Ballou _Edge-Tools of Speech_, p. 29 [1886].

He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to
think security, and not progress, the highest lesson
of statecraft.
--James Russell Lowell (1819—1891)
American poet, critic, essayist, and diplomat.
"New England Two Centuries Ago" [1865]

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most
far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.
--Stanley Milgram (1933—1984)
American psychologist.
_Obedience To Authority_ch. 1 [1974]

-----

autocrat [AW-tuh-krat], noun:
An absolute monarch who rules with unlimited authority; by extension,
any person with undisputed authority in a relationship or situation.

contumacy (noun)
Stubborn and obstinate resistance to authority; rebelliousness.

diktat [dik-TAHT], noun:
1. A harsh settlement unilaterally imposed on a defeated party.
2. An authoritative decree or order.

recalcitrant (adj.)
Marked by stubborn resistance to and defiance of authority or guidance.




AUTHORS

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see: "BOOKS"
see: "JOURNALISTS"
see: "POETS"
see: "SHAKESPEARE"
see: "WRITING"


Wanting to meet an author because you like his
work is like wanting to meet a duck because you
like patι.
--Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)
Canadian novelist and poet.
Quoted in "Evening Standard" (London) [9 April 2002].

When I am dead, I hope it may be said
His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.
--Hilaire Belloc (1870—1953)
British poet, essayist, historian, and novelist.
"On His Books" [1923]

About the most originality that any writer can hope
to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
--Josh Billings [Henry Wheeler Shaw] (1818—1885)
American humorist.
Attributed in "Books of the Month" [1959].

There is probably no hell for authors in the next
world — they suffer so much from critics and
publishers in this.
--Christian Nestell Bovee (1820—1904)
American writer.
_Intuitions and Summaries of Thought_"Authors" [1862]

Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one
direction, have great influence on the public mind.
--Edmund Burke (1729—1797)
Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters.
_Reflections on the Revolution in France_ [1790]

The success of many works is found in the relation between
the mediocrity of the authors' ideas and that of the ideas of
the public.
--Sιbastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort (1741—1794)
French playwright and conversationalist.
Quoted in James Wood (ed.) _Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient
and Modern, English and Foreign Sources_, p. 456 [1893].

If you liked a book, don't meet the author.
--attributed to Raymond Chandler (1888—1959)
American writer of detective fiction.

-

There are three difficulties in authorship;— to write any
thing worth the publishing — to find honest men to publish
it — and to get sensible men to read it.
--C.C. Colton (1780—1832)
English clergyman and writer.
_Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words_, "Preface" [1821 ed.]


We should have a glorious conflagration if all who cannot
put fire into their works would only consent to put their
works into the fire.
--C.C. Colton (1780—1832)
English clergyman and writer.
_Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words_ [1824 ed.] "Preface"

-

Those authors into whose hands nature has placed a magic wand,
with which they no sooner touch us than we forget the unhappiness
in life, than the darkness leaves our soul, and we are reconciled to
existence, should be placed among the benefactors of the human
race.
--Denis Diderot (1713—1784)
French writer and philosopher.
Attributed in Maturin M. Ballou _Treasury of Thought_, p. 39 [10th ed. 1884].

Of all unfortunate men one of the unhappiest is a middling
author endowed with too lively a sensibility for criticism.
--Isaac D'Israeli (1766—1848)
English author and the father of Benjamin Disraeli.
_Curiosities of Literature_, vol. 2 "Anecdotes of Authors Censured" [3 vols., 1824 ed.]

Whatever may be the success of my stories, I shall
be resolute in preserving my incognito, having
observed that a nom de plume secures all the
advantages without the disagreeables of reputation.
--George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (1819—1880)
English novelist.
Letter to William Blackwood [4 February 1857].

Were it offered to my choice, I should have no
objection to a repetition of the same life from
its beginning, only asking the advantages
authors have in a second edition to correct
some faults of the first.
--Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
American politician, inventor, and scientist.
_Autobiography_ [1798]

The most original modern authors are not so because they
advance what is new, but simply because they know how to
put what they have to say, as if it had never been said before.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832)
German poet, novelist, and playwright.
Quoted in Henry Attwell _A Book of Thoughts_ [1865].

Graham Greene famously remarked that there was
a splinter of ice in the heart of every writer, and
the comment is borne out by Arnold Bennett. A
realist writer, Bennett took trouble to get the
details right. He claimed that the description of
the death of an old character in one of his novels
could not be improved on. 'I took infinite pains
over it ,' he said. 'All the time my father was
dying I was at the bedside making copious notes.'
--in _The Mammoth Book of Literary Anecdotes_ ed. Philip Gooden [2002].

^

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804—1864)
American novelist.

By mutual agreement, Hawthorne's wife never
disturbed him during the course of his writing.
On the night he finished "The Scarlet Letter,"
he read the last chapter to her. 'It broke her
heart,' he said later, 'and sent her up to bed
with a grievous headache, which I look upon
as a triumphant success.'

--_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_
edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.]


All women, as authors, are feeble and tiresome. I
wish they were forbidden to write, on pain of having
their faces deeply scarified with an oyster shell.
--Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804—1864)
American novelist and short-story writer.
Letter to his publisher [1852].

^

When I read something saying I've not done anything
as good as Catch-22 I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'
--Joseph Heller (1923—1999)
American novelist.
In "The Times" [9 June 1993], as quoted in Elizabeth Knowles
(ed.) _The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations_ [1999 ed.].

^

George Plimpton: What would you consider the best intellectual training
for the would-be writer?

Ernest Hemingway: Let's say that he should go out and hang himself
because he finds that writing well is impossibly difficult. Then he should
be cut down without mercy and forced by his own self to write as well
as he can for the rest of his life. At least he will have the story of the
hanging to commence with.

--In _The Paris Review Interviews_, Vol. I [Spring 1958.]

^

^

Victor Hugo (1802—1885)
French poet, novelist, and dramatist.

When Victor Hugo wanted to know what his
publishers thought of the manuscript of
_Les Misιrables_, he sent them a note
reading simply: '?' They replied: '!'

--_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_
edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.]

^

The only happy author in this world is he
who is below the care of reputation.
--Washington Irving (1783—1859)
American author, essayist, and travel book writer.
_Tales of a Traveller_, pt. II "The Poor-Devil Author" [1824]

The demand that I make of my reader is that
he should devote his whole life to reading my
works.
--James Joyce (1882—1941)
Irish novelist.
Quoted in F.L. Lucas _The Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal_ [1936].

-

Why don’t you write books people can read?
--Nora Joyce (1884–1951)
Attributed; to her husband, James.


Mostly he read himself.
--Nora Joyce (1884–1951)
When asked in her widowhood which authors James Joyce had liked to read;
quoted in Brenda Maddox _Nora: The Biography of Nora Joyce_ [1988].

-

The best fame is a writer's fame: it's enough
to get a table at a good restaurant, but not
enough that you get interrupted when you
eat.
--Fran Lebowitz (b. 1946)
American humorist.
In "Observer" [30 May 1993].

[Upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe in November, 1862:]
So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made
this great war!
--Abraham Lincoln (1809—1865)
American Republican statesman, President [1861—1865].
Quoted in _McClure's Magazine_ [April 1911].

People take England on trust, and repeat that Shakespeare
is the greatest of all authors. I have read him: there is nothing
that compares Racine or Corneille: his plays are unreadable,
pitiful.
--Napoleon I (1769—1821)
Emperor of France [1804—1815].
_The Corsican: A Diary of Napoleon's Life in His Own Words_ (ed. R. M. Johnston) [1910]

I believe the modern writer who has influenced
me most is Somerset Maugham, whom I admire
immensely for his power of telling a story
straightforwardly and without frills.
--George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903—1950)
English novelist.
Quoted in Joseph Epstein, _Is It All Right to Read Somerset
Maugham?_, "The New Criterion" [November 1985].

[Of William Saroyan:]
When he had his first acceptance the stack of
rejection slips was even with the top of his desk.
--Lee Pennington
In "Writer's Digest"

-

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be
prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be
banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
"Notice," _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ [1884]


... and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and
I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd 'a' knowed what a
trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't 'a' tackled it,
and ain't a-going to no more.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
In the final paragraph of
_The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ [1884]


[Of Jane Austen:]
Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice,' I want to
dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own
shin-bone.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
Letter to Joseph Twichell (13 September 1898].

&

[Of Edgar Allan Poe:]
To me his prose is unreadable — like Jane Austen's.
No, there is a difference. I could read his prose on
salary, but not Jane's.

Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that
they allowed her to die a natural death.

--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
Letter to William Dean Howells [18 January 1909].

-

[When asked why no woman had ever written a 'tolerable tragedy':]
The composition of a tragedy requires testicles.
--Voltaire (Franηois Marie Arouet) (1694—1778)
French writer and philosopher.
Letter from Byron to John Murray [2 April 1817].

-

Donald W. Goodwin, chairman of the department of psychiatry at the
University of Kansas Medical Center and author of the recent book
"Alcohol and the Writer" points out that while objective data on the
numbers of writers afflicted with alcoholism is hard to come by,
statistics show that, after bartenders, more writers die of cirrhosis of
the liver, a disease closely associated with alcoholism, than people in
other occupations.

Goodwin looked at the seven Americans who have won the Nobel prize
for literature and found that four of them — Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill,
William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway — were definitely alcoholic, while
a fifth — John Steinbeck — drank to excess.

--Ann Waldron "Writers and Alcohol"
_The Washington Post_ [14 March 1989]

-

To Herbert Westbrook, without whose never-failing
sympathy and encouragement this book would have
been finished in half the time.
--P.G. [Pelham Grenville] Wodehouse (1881—1975)
English humorist; American citizen from 1955.
Dedication in _A Gentleman of Leisure_ [1910].

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men
who have minded beyond reason the opinions
of others.
--Virginia Woolf (1882—1941)
English novelist.
_A Room of One's Own_ [1929]




AUTOBIOGRAPHY

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see: "AUTHORS" (above)
see: "BIOGRAPHY"
see: "MEMORY"
see: "TRUTH"


I used to think I was an interesting person, but I must
tell you how sobering a thought it is to realize your
life's story fills about thirty-five pages and you have,
actually, not much to say.
--Roseanne Barr (b. 1952)
American comedian.
_Roseanne: My Life As a Woman_ [1990]

An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with
the last installment missing.
--Quentin Crisp [Denis Pratt] (1908—1999)
English writer.
_The Naked Civil Servant_, ch. 29 [1968]

He made the books and he died.
--William Faulkner (1897—1962)
American novelist.
Letter to Malcolm Cowley [11 February 1949],
(his own "sum and history of my life".)

I don't think anyone should write their
autobiography until after they're dead.
--attributed to Samuel Goldwyn [Schmuel Gelbfisz] (1882—1974)
American film producer.

Autobiography is now as common as adultery and hardly less reprehensible.
--John Grigg (1924—2001)
British writer and journalist.
In "Sunday Times" [28 February 1962].

I should be trading on the blood of my men.
--Robert E. Lee (1807—1870)
American Confederate general.
(Refusing an offer to write his memoirs; attributed, perhaps apocryphal.)

The trouble with writing a book about yourself is that you
can't fool around. If you write about someone else, you can
stretch the truth from here to Finland. If you write about
yourself the slightest deviation makes you realize instantly
that there may be honor among thieves, but *you* are just
a dirty liar.
--Groucho [Julius Henry] Marx (1895—1977)
American film comedian.
_Groucho and Me_ [1959]

Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals
something disgraceful. A man who gives a good
account of himself is probably lying, since any life
when viewed from the inside is simply a series of
defeats.
--George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903—1950)
English novelist.
"Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali" in _Critical Essays_ [1946]

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll
probably want to know is where I was born, and what
my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were
occupied and all before they had me, and all that David
Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into
it, if you want to know the truth.
--J.D. Salinger (1919—2010)
American novelist and short-story writer.
Opening lines, _Catcher in the Rye_ [1951].

Don't give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life.
They are of little interest and, anyway, you can't express
them. Don't analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and
let your readers make their own judgments.
--Evelyn Waugh (1903—1966)
Engish novelist.
In a review of Stephen Spender's autobiography,
"World Within World;" in "Tablet," (London) [5 May 1951].

Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people
say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that
even less can one trust what people say about themselves.
--Dame Rebecca West [Cecily Isabel Fairfiield] (1892—1983)
English journalist, novelist, and critic.
"Sunday Telegraph" (London) [1975]



Click picture to ZOOM
AUTOMOBILES

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.

see: "TRAVEL" for related links
see: "HOME & FAMILY" for related links


My idea of paradise is a perfect automobile going
thirty miles an hour on a smooth road to a twelfth-
century cathedral.
--Henry Brooks Adams (1838—1918)
American historian & man of letters.
Summarizing his notions of travel in a 1902 letter to a niece.

Shorter cars use so much more gas. With a short car you
have to travel much further to go the same distance.
--Gracie Allen [Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen] (1895—1964)
American comedienne.
Quoted in Susan Sackett & Cheryl Blythe
_Say Goodnight, Gracie!: The Story of Burns and Allen_ [1986].

The motor-car will help solve the congestion of traffic.
--Arthur James Balfour (1848—1930)
British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [1920—1925].
Attributed prediction, c. 1910.

It seems to me that the only result of compulsory
insurance for motor vehicles would be that nobody
would care and accidents would increase.
--Lord Banbury [1926]

Except for the American woman, nothing
interests the eye of the American man more
than an automobile, or seems so important
to him as an object of aesthetic appreciation.
--attributed to Alfred Hamilton Barr Jr. (1902—1981)
American art historian.

[When asked for driving directions:]
If you come to a fork in the road, take it.
--Yogi Berra (b. 1925)
American baseball player and manager; elected to the Hall of Fame in 1972.
_Yogi: It Ain't Over_ [1989]

^^

Carol Burnett (b. 1934)
American actress.

Climbing out of a cab one day, Miss Burnett inadvertently
caught her coat in the door. As the driver continued on his
way, unaware of the accident, the comedienne was obliged
to run alongside the moving vehicle to avoid being pulled
off her feet.

A quick-thinking passerby, noticing her plight, hailed the cab
and alerted the driver. Having released Miss Burnett's coat,
the driver asked her anxiously, 'Are you all right?'

"Yes," she replied, still gasping for breath, 'but how much
more do I owe you?'

--_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_
edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.]

^^

The guy rolled down his window
And yelled for me to hear:
'Hey, buddy, how can I get this car
Out of second gear?'
--"Beep Beep" [1958 song].
Sung by The Playmates and written by Claps & Cicchetti.

Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than
you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you
is a maniac.
--attributed to George Carlin (1937—2008)
American stand-up comedian and author.

See the USA in your Chevrolet!
--General Motors Corp.
(Commercial sung by Dinah Shore.)

She told me the car wasn't running well because there was
water in the carburetor. I asked where the car was and she
told me, 'In the swimming pool.'
--attributed to Rodney Dangerfield [Jacob Cohen]
(1921—2004) American comedian.

[On the Model T Ford, 1909:]
Any customer can have a car painted any
color that he wants so long as it is black.
--Henry Ford (1863—1947)
American car manufacturer.
_My Life and Work_ ch. 2 [1922]

^^

At the end of the Second World War there was a huge pent-up demand for
cars, and plenty of money to buy cars with. In the postwar period, the auto-
mobile literally reshaped America. Government helped speed the process. In
1956 the federal government embarked on its most ambitious road-building
spree: a few cents out of every gallon of gas was to go into a Highway Trust
Fund, and the money was to be used to build a network of interstate highways,
criss-crossing the country, north and south, east and west. State and local
money also poured into highways; public transportation shriveled and died in
some cities; in others, it was sharply cut back.

The automobile was the great American machine. Rich people had big,
flashy cars; poor people clunkers, used cars, small, old, rusty cars: anything,
as long as it would go. The automobile became in many ways the key to
American culture. It was the very motor force of American individualism; if the
average family was a slave to its automobile, and utterly dependent on it, it was
at the same time independent of shackles of time and space that had tied their
grandparents to a specific place. The road system built paths to the suburbs.
During the postwar period, government also lent money to veterans to buy
homes. Suburbs like Levittown sprang up almost overnight. Millions of (mostly
white) families deserted the cities and headed out for the fringes, where people
had backyards and barbecue pits. The breadwinner did not usually work in the
suburbs (later on, the factories and headquarters buildings followed the crowd
out past the city limits); but the families lived there, they mowed their lawns and
planted flowers, and they did their shopping in the new malls and shopping
centers — islands of stores afloat in an ocean of parked cars. The old central
cities stopped growing. The future was in suburbia, exurbia, and shopping
malls. The future rode to work, to the store, and back home again, in cars.

The automobile was now a lifeline — the only way people could connect
themselves and the places they lived, shopped, and worked, the people they
wanted to visit, their extended families, their leisure-time activities. It altered
every aspect of life. It led the way to the new consumer society, the suburban
society, the society of entertainment and leisure. It produced a drive-in and
drive-by society. You could, for example, watch a movie without getting out
of your car — the postwar period was the heyday of the drive-in movie. Fifteen
percent of all theaters were drive-ins by 1951, and they earned 20 percent
of total theater receipts. Teenagers called these magnificent establishments
"passion pits"; young families used them to avoid the baby-sitter problem.
The drive-in movie is now almost extinct; but the drive-in bank and the drive-in
burger joint — and even the drive-in espresso bar — are very much alive and
kicking.

As the automobile took over, older forms of transport fell into decay. The
first casualty, of course, was the horse, and the wagons, carts, and buggies
that horses dragged along. This was, on the whole, a good thing. By the end
of the twentieth century, people were used to the idea that the automobile is
choking the cities to death. In the 1930s the matter looked quite different.
Edith Abbott, in her study of the slums of Chicago, considered the automobile
a godsend. It drove out the horse, and along with it "the filthy stables and the
dreadful manure heaps that accumulated." The alleys had once been
"unspeakably filthy and disgusting." No more. And the auto also led to the
"opening-up, widening, and repaving of many formerly little-used streets
through dreary sections" of town. The same was true in other cities as well.
According to one estimate, in New York City horses deposited 2.5 million
pounds of manure and sixty thousand gallons of urine on the streets every
day; the city had to haul away fifteen thousand dead horses a year. The
automobile, of course, soon outlived its role of urban savior. Ultimately traffic
got worse and worse, and the polluting fumes of millions of cars replaced
the pollution of the horse. Clean air legislation was, in part at least, a
response to the challenge of the car.

The horse was no match for the auto; and neither was the passenger train.
The little engine that could no longer did; passenger rail travel limped gradually
into obsolescence. Most younger Americans at the end of the twentieth century
had never taken a serious railroad trip — at least not in America. The closest
they had come was a ride in Disneyland; or perhaps a ride to town on a
commuter train. The Interstate Commerce Commission, created in 1887, that
great federal regulatory agency designed to tame the mighty railroad industry,
died with a whimper in 1995. Trains still carry a lot of freight; and the Surface
Transportation Board still regulates them, to a degree. But intercity passenger
travel survives, really, only in a few dense corridors, like the one between Boston
and Washington.

The automobile even influenced crime and the war against crime. The famous
bandits and gangs of the 1920s and 1930s, people like Bonnie and Clyde,
depended on fast cars for their fast crimes and fast living. One writer in 1924
blamed autos and good roads for the increase in "banditry." Crime had gone
interstate, along with the automobile. And interstate crime, in turn, strengthened
the case for interstate crime fighting — for institutions like the FBI. The automobile
helped erode the borders that had been so prominent a feature of American
criminal justice.

--Lawrence M. Friedman (b. 1930)
_American Law in the 20th Century_ [2002]
Ch. 18 "Getting Around and Spreading the Word" pp. 550-552.

^^

As the light changed from red to green to amber
and back to red again, I sat there thinking about
life. Was it nothing more than a lot of honking
and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.
--attributed to Jack Handey (b. 1949)
American comedian and comedy writer.

They think they can make fuel from horse manure....
Now, I don't know if your car will be able to get 30
miles to the gallon, but it's sure gonna put a stop to
siphoning.
--attributed to Billie Holliday [Eleanora Fagan] (1915—1959)
American jazz singer.

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits
are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow
horns to break up traffic jams.
--attributed to Mary Ellen Kelly

The automobile changed our dress, manners,
social customs, vacation habits, the shape of
our cities, consumer purchasing patterns,
common tastes and positions in intercourse.
--John Keats (1921—2000)
American author.
_The Insolent Chariots_ [1958]

'Are you lost, daddy?' I asked tenderly.
'Shut up,' he explained.
--Ring Lardner[Ringgold Wilmer Lardner] (1885—1933)
American writer and satirist.
_The Young Immigrants_, ch. 10 [1920]

Patience is something you admire in the driver
behind you, but not in the one ahead.
--attributed to Bill McGlashen

I was going to stay on the three million miles
of bent and narrow rural American two-lane,
the roads to Podunk and Toonerville. Into
the sticks, the boondocks, the burgs,
backwaters, jerkwaters, wide-spots-in-the-
road, the don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it-towns.
Into those places where you say, 'My God!
What if you lived here!'
--William Least Heat Moon [Bill Trogdon] (b. 1939)
American author.
_Blue Highways_ [1982]

Beneath this slab
John Brown is stowed
He watched the ads,
And not the road.
--Ogden Nash (1902—1971)
American writer of humorous poetry.
"Lather As You Go" in _Good Intentions_ [1942].

-

There are a number of mechanical devices which increase
sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these
is the Porsche 911 Cabriolet.
--P.J. O'Rourke (b. 1947)
American political satirist.
_Modern Manners_ [1989 ed.]


No, the American car industry was not destroyed by its cars. The
American car industry was destroyed by the Fun-Suckers. You know
the Fun-Suckers. You may be married to one. The Fun-Suckers go
around saying how unsafe this fun thing is and how unhealthy that
fun thing is and how unfair, unjust, uncaring, insensitive, divisive,
contagious, and fattening every other fun thing is.

The Fun-Suckers are a bit too careful, a bit too concerned, a bit too
scrupulous. That's bullshit. They're evil and they hate us. The motive
behind spoiling things for others and then throwing a wet blanket over
the rained-on parade is a matter of neither caution nor morals. The
Fun-Suckers suck the fun out of life in order to gain control. They've
found a way to gain power without merit.

--P.J. O'Rourke (b. 1947)
American political satirist.
Introduction, _Driving Like Crazy_ [2009]

-

When a man opens the car door for his wife,
it's either a new car or a new wife.
--Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (b. 1921)
Consort of Queen Elizabeth II.
In "Today" [2 March 1988].

-

Oh, the lovely motor car,
What a wreck it's made of Pa!
Over twenty doctor chaps
Worked on him in his collapse.

Mother wears a sickly grin
Where her face is dented in.
What do we care as long as we are
Having a ride in the motor car?

--Cole Porter (1892—1964)
American songwriter.
In William McBrien _Cole Porter, a Biography_, p. 32. [1998]

-

Men like cars, women like clothes. Women only
like cars because they take them to clothes.
--attributed to Rita Rudner (b. 1955)
American stand-up comedian.

-

There were certain standard practices in the repair
of the Model T. For instance, if the radiator sprung
a leak, you dropped a handful of corn or oatmeal
into the water. The heat of the water cooked the
mush which coated the tubes and sealed the leak.
Once, years later, I had a car of another make of
great age and dignity. My mother was coming to
visit me and I was to meet her at the railroad station.

My radiator was leaking pretty badly, so, automatically,
I put in a handful of oatmeal, forgetting that times
had changed. You see, the Model T circulated its water
by a principle, part magic, part accident, and part physics,
but this other car had a water pump—a needless and
stupid innovation. This car ran so cool that it took a
long time for the mush to cook. I got to the station,
installed my dignified mother in the front seat and
started home. Naturally there was no radiator cap;
we considered such things a nuisance, since we were
always losing them anyway. Suddenly, there was a
sloppy explosion and a Bikini mushroom of oatmeal
rose into the air. Part of it splashed on the windshield,
but the larger part on my mother's beflowered hat.

We drove through downtown Los Angeles erupting
mush, my mother scraping it out of her eyes. I never
saw so much mush. I never saw my mother so mad.
It goes to show the kind of habits you got into from
driving the Model T.

--John Ernst Steinbeck (1902—1968)
American novelist.
"A Model T Named 'It' "

-

For six days of the week we find it no trouble at all to drive a car
about town. New York's traffic, however furious, is predictable;
and her taxis, even in moments of great verve, are accurate. For
six days driving is a pleasure, but on Sundays all is changed: the
town, we have discovered, fills up with visiting motorists who have
come in from the Oranges and the Pelhams to see a movie. They
make driving a hazard almost too great to take on. The minute a
red light shows, they stop dead, imperiling everybody behind. The
instant a taxi seems about to sideswipe them, they swerve
desperately over and sideswipe somebody else, usually us. When
they are confronted by a mass of pedestrians at the crossing, instead
of charging boldly in and scattering them in the orthodox manner by
sheer bluster, (which is the only way), they creep timidly up blowing
their horns, which lulls the pedestrians and ties up everything. They
are easy to spot, these visiting motorists; and the only thing to do,
we have found, is to nudge them frequently on the bumper, and
chivy them about.
--E.B. [Elwyn Brooks] White (1899—1985)
American essayist and literary stylist.
"Visiting Motorists, December 2, 1933" in Rebecca M. Dale (ed.)
_E.B. White: Writings from The New Yorker 1927-1976_ [1990].

-

Nothing ages your car as much as the
sight of your neighbor's new one.
--anon.
In Evan Esar _20,000 Quips & Quotes_ [1995].

The trouble is that too often there is forty horsepower
under the bonnet and one asspower at the wheel.
--anon.
Quoted in T.R. Glover & D.D. Calvin
_A Corner of Empire: The Old Ontario Strand_ [1937].

--

A man approached a local in a village he was visiting.
"What's the quickest way to York?"

The local scratched his head and asked, "Are you
walking or driving?"

"I'm driving."

"That's the quickest way!"

--

A woman brought her car to the dealership and said her husband
told her it was time for a 30,000-mile check up.

In going through the work order, the service manager asked her,
"When was the last time the tires were rotated, ma'am?"

"Silly," she replied, "all the way I drove here!"

--

I've sure gotten old. I've had two bypass surgeries, a hip replacement,
new knees. Fought prostate cancer and diabetes. I'm half blind, can't
hear anything quieter than a jet engine, take forty different medications
that make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts. Have bouts with
dementia. Have poor circulation; hardly feel my hands and feet anymore.
Can't remember if I'm 85 or 92. Have lost all my friends. But, thank
God, I still have my driver's license.
--anon.

--

"Man Shoots Self in Alleged Road-Rage Confrontation"
--headline, Associated Press [21 April 2008]

--

Below are actual insurance claim form gaffes. These are from the collection
made by Norwich Union [Automobile insurance company] for their 1996
Christmas magazine.

"I started to slow down but the traffic was more stationary than I thought."

"I pulled into a lay-by with smoke coming from under the bonnet. I realised
the car was on fire so took my dog out and smothered it with a blanket."

Q: Could either driver have done anything to avoid the accident?
A: Travelled by bus?

A Norwich Union customer collided with a cow. The questions and answers
on the claim form were:
Q - What warning was given by you?
A - Horn
Q - What warning was given by the other party?
A - Moo

"On approach to the traffic lights the car in front suddenly broke."

"I didn't think the speed limit applied after midnight."

"I knew the dog was possessive about the car but I would not have asked her
to drive it if I had thought there was any risk."

"Windscreen broken. Cause unknown. Probably Voodoo."

--

SQUASH HIM LIKE A TRUFFLE

This item was reported on NPR's "Car Talk"

Cecile Porc drove for eight miles with a cyclist spread-eagled across
her windscreen, refusing to stop because she thought he was a mugger.
Madame Porc, 83, hit the man at a crossroads near Valence [France],
catapulting him onto the bonnet where he clung for dear life. As she
accelerated to 70 miles an hour, she was shouting "Murderer, Murderer"
said the victim. He hammered on the windscreen and screamed "I'm
a cyclist" but she just turned on the windscreen wipers. She was
eventually stopped by a police roadblock but remained unrepentant.
"My only regret," she later declared, "is that I didn't drive into a wall
and squash him like a truffle."

--

Deputy Todd pulled alongside a speeding car on the freeway.
Glancing at the car, he was astounded to see that the woman
at the wheel was knitting!

Todd cranked down his window and yelled, “PULL OVER!”

“NO,” the woman yelled back, “IT’S A SCARF!”

---

TRIVIA:

The first parking meter was installed in Oklahoma
City, Oklahoma, in 1935.

In Tokyo, a bicycle is faster than a car for most
trips of less than 50 minutes. [2004]

-----

carom [KAIR-uhm], noun:
1. A rebound following a collision; a glancing off.
2. A shot in billiards in which the cue ball successively
strikes two other balls on the table.


end page



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