winterbadger | a few quotes

While the saucepan I used to cook the eggs soaks in the sink... a few quotes from my grandfather (my mum's dad, the Elizabethan lit. scholar and Yale prof.) My mum sent them to me recently, just as examples of the sort of things (mostly silly) he would say (I never met him--he died fairly young).

Oh dear, how my chest has fallen! I fear my honey-haired youth is behind me!

[in reply to my grandmother accusing him of 'escaping' into books] Of COURSE I read as an escape! Is there anything wrong with that? Doesn't everyone?

I can't do dishes--I have a heart murmur.

I only go to Battell Chapel when they need me to take the place of a potted palm.

Drink WATER? Don't be ridiculous! It rots leather and rusts iron.

Edmund Keane my favourite actor? Certainly not--the Marx Brothers!

The only civilised way to travel is east [to the UK].

[After he and his wife had a weekend trip to visit friends in Albany, someone pointed out that the little mica side-windows in the back of his touring car were broken.] Alas--they were shot out by Indians with arrows as we neared Albany.... There's nothing but Indians west of Albany.