Water, taken in moderation cannot hurt anybody. -- Mark Twain

You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior executive.

A morgue is a morgue is a morgue. They can paint the walls with aggressively cheerful primary colors and splashy bold graphics, but it's still a holding place for the dead until they can be parted out to organ banks. Not that I would have cared normally but my viewpoint was skewed. The relentless pleasance of the room I sat in seemed only grotesque. -- Pat Cadigan, "Mindplayers"

When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know who have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

You will be awarded a medal for disregarding safety in saving someone.

It is a wise father that knows his own child. -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"

I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness; And from that full meridian of my glory I haste now to my setting. I shall fall, Like a bright exhalation in the evening And no man see me more. -- Shakespeare

You may my glories and my state dispose, But not my griefs; still am I king of those. -- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"

You have a strong appeal for members of your own sex.

Snow Day -- stay home.

Avoid reality at all costs.

What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out the window.

You'd like to do it instantaneously, but that's too slow.

Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words since I first called my brother's father dad. -- William Shakespeare, "Kind John"

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

Save energy: be apathetic.

She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot. -- Mark Twain

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know. -- Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.

Too much is just enough. -- Mark Twain, on whiskey