This radio piece was developed for submission to the "Short List"
collaboration between Transom and NPR's Day to Day.
The idea is to present a list of some sort, making the listener
wonder what the connection is between the items. At the very end, the
connection is revealed.
I developed my list after paging through an old notebook of
quotations.
Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I'll tell
you a story [F. Scott Fitzgerald]
This is the true joy in life... being a force of nature instead of a
feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that
the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
[George Bernard
Shaw]
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good
example. [Mark Twain]
I prefer an accommodating vice to an obstinate virtue.
[Moliere]
He's had such good luck for so long that he's come to have delusions
of competence. [Garrison Keillor]
"Lady, a man is divided into two parts, body & spirit -- body and
spirit," he repeated. "The body, lady, is like a house. It don't go
anywhere; but the spirit, lady, is like the automobile: always on the
move, always..." [unattributed - maybe
Flannery O'Connor]
I do regret that I have spent too much of my life trying to find
what I called "truth," trying to make what I called "sense." I never
knew what I meant by truth, never made the sense I hoped... because I wasted too much
time. [Lillian Hellman]
All right, then, I'll go to hell. [Mark Twain]
Carpe diem [Horace]
Quotations scribbled into a notebook when I was young.