Roy Blount

"I do hope you realize that every time you use disinterested to mean uninterested, an angel dies."

"A convention has to be something that more than one person is moved to take hold of. It's a convention to call your sweetheart "dumplin" or "honeybun." It would also be a convention to call her "gulag…"

"Usage ain't always a matter of ought."

"I know, you want to make a citizen's arrest of anyone whose menu lists "Idaho potato baked in it's skin," but you can't."

"Any given generation gives the next generation advice that the given generation should have been given by the previous generation but now it's too late."

"That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp."

"In the beginning, Atlanta was without form, and void; and it still is."

"Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky."