' "We've already been killed, all of us. It happened so long ago, we've forgotten it." ' --Yasmina Khadra, Th* Swallows of Kabul (tr J Cull*n 2004)


"If you do retail for any time at all, you soon learn to recognize (at a distance, without a word being spoken) a certain category of customer: the ones who, out of some innate shortfall of gumption, want only for the product they seek to be placed firmly in their two hands. They won't look for it. You wonder if they ever conceive of such a thing.
   Friends, this bunch invented gods." --Maroon*d Among Los*rs


"Neo-Khuzdul has triconsonantal roots."


"...the word roof has a different meaning for a carpenter and for a refugee." --Richard Wall, Wittg*nst*in in Ir*land (2000)


A 78 in 2006. (thanx P*t*r!)