Jean Shepherd

“You'll shoot your eye out, kid.”

“In the heat of battle, my father wove a tapestry of obscenity that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan.”

“My father worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay. It was his true medium.”

“Oh fudge... only I didn't say fudge. I said THE word. The big one. The queen mother of dirty words. The F-dash-dash-dash word.”

“Fra-gee-lay... it must be Italian!”

“Nostalgia is a seductive liar.”

“Some men are Baptists, others Catholics; my father was an Oldsmobile man.”

“The human condition is a terminal one. There are no cures.”

“In our world, you were either a bully, a toady, or one of the nameless rabble in between.”

“Adulthood is a calamitous condition from which there is no escape.”

“It was... the classic mother-BB-gun block. 'You'll shoot your eye out!' That deadly phrase uttered by mothers everywhere since the dawn of time.”

“You can't be a real man until you've had a dog you've loved and lost.”

“Creativity is the ability to see relationships where none exist.”

“The dark is a breeding ground for all sorts of vague and terrifying things.”

“Life, after all, is a continuing script, and we are all supporting players.”

“Randy lay there like a slug. It was his only defense.”

“I write for myself and I write for my readers and I don't give a damn for the critics.”

“I, Ralph Parker, was a dreamer. A dreamer who dreamed of the greatest Christmas gift in the history of the world.”