James Lileks Quotes

We always ask where the time went. We never ask where it's coming from.

I’ll feel that horrible feeling in my stomach you get when you’ve gone over to the Dark Side. But I’ll be fine. That’s the good thing about the Dark Side. Eventually, your eyes adjust.

Genius flames and dies, but amiable competence can live forever.

The newspaper is a lecture. The Web is a conversation.

I don't believe in the very concept of "first thing in the morning." I'm a "third thing in the afternoon" fellow.

Calculus destroys self-esteem on contact.

If Mother had to be told not to shove the entire brick of Ivory up Junior's hindquarters, constipation is the least of his problems.

I'll start drinking tea over coffee when the big hand is on Never and the little hand is on Ain't Gonna Happen.

The mind forever turns on the lathe of its own contradictions.

And I don't want posture lessons from a country that spent the last 20 years flopping on its back and grabbing its ankles when Saddam showed up waving stacks of Francs in exchange for bang-sticks.

Contempt for the things people choose of their own free will is, at its heart, contempt for free will.

From Day One the very existence of [Camp Bravo] has been a popcorn hull in the tender gums of the hard left.

Ah, if only the best place for storing embryonic stem cells was Yucca Flat.

The same people who accuse America of coddling dictators are sputtering with bilious fury because we actually deposed one.

A Children’s Museum, however, is more of a Funatorium. You are encouraged to touch things, which is poor training for subsequent museum visitation.

The popular Arab imagination is a pliant and inventive thing; it can explain any defeat. It is a compass that always points toward the Jew.

If you think the ’80s were dumber than the ’70s, either you weren’t there or you weren’t paying attention.

I've always wondered if there was a Hezbollah version of minesweeper where you get points for blowing up on your first move.

Yay Condi Rice. I want her to go to Saudi Arabia, and I want her first words upon getting off the plane to be 'I'll drive.'

When your opponent sets up a straw man, set it on fire and kick the cinders around the stage. Don't worry about losing the Strawperson- American community vote.

I want to believe in intelligent design, and hence I am suspicious of anything that seems to confirm my desire to believe.

All you need to know about Arafat was that he insisted on wearing a pistol when he addressed the UN General Assembly. And all you need to know about the UN, I suppose, is that they let him.

There are three stages to a man's life. 1. He laughs at Clark Griswold. 2. He sympathizes deeply with Clark Griswold. 3. He laughs at Clark Griswold.

If you can pick the baby up without him squirting our of your hands like a bar of soap in the shower, he's not oiled up enough.