Someday I shall publish a counter proposal to Bartlett's and their ilk: a tome of Uncommon Quotations, filled with obscure, highly situational, or wildly inappropriate fare. The whole point of the more pedestrian versions of these collections has always seemed to me to be a mixture of self-propaganda / self-aggrandizement ("Look, everyone! I'm being poignant again...here it comes...") and the insincere attempt of public speakers to resonate with strangers. We tell anecdotes to familiarize ourselves, to break the ice, and to illustrate our own literacy to an audience that in all likelihood doesn't know the difference between a person who is well read as a whole, and a person who has a collection of quotation books and Cliff Notes. I would like to present the exact opposite; I'd like to author a book of quotations and anecdotes designed to baffle, alienate, or offend the audience...split the collection into non-sequitur Zen, discomfiting personal revelations from complete unknowns, and the vilest jokes available.
(a):
"Sometimes, when you're not looking, I'm someone else."
This is one of those things you say when people are inebriated or somehow have a tenuous grip on the moment (at a peak of stress, perhaps).
(b):
"My neighbor Carl once told me that he could only prepare for the banality of these conferences by masturbating furiously in the bathroom while choking himself with his tie."
Personally revealing, attributed to someone nobody else knows, and the kind of thing that visualizes easily.
(c):
"Do you know why the douche was invented? Ever try to teach a fotze to gargle and spit?"
As related to me by a 54 year old German immigrant who was quite possibly the funniest woman I have ever met; it even has a certain old-world charm when uttered by a bespectacled hausfrau from Stuttgart.
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