Selected routine quotes

1. I had a lot of dates but I decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows.

2. How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

3. Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

4. I was unemployed for a long time, but I couldn't adjust to the hours.

5. Spring is noticed, if at all By people sitting in railway trains.

6. There is always a little more toothpaste in the tube. Think about it.

7. The one who is happy can never get too early out of bed.

8. A cartoonist is someone who has to draw the same thing day after day without repeating himself.

9. Commuter - one who spends his life In riding to and from his wife; A man who shaves and takes a train And then rides back to shave again.

10. Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.

11. There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it.

12. No matter how big or soft or warm your bed is, you still have to get out of it.

13. As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.

14. You've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God.

15. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.

16. You won't skid if you stay in a rut.

17. Things start out as hopes and end up as habits.

18. I lurch from chaos to chaos. I can't find my driving licence and my clothes are everywhere - cooking is the neatest thing I do.

19. I took a fortnight off. But I'm not a great believer in breaks. I don't want to be rattling around inside my own head. I did feel I was spiralling into a Kathy Burke character and tried going out, but I prefer it here. Filming keeps me busy. It absorbs me.

20. First thing every morning before you arise say out loud, 'I believe,' three times.

21. Time, motion and wine cause sleep.

22. Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

23. Life is like underwear, should be changed twice a day.

24. Marriage made people old and familiar, while still young.

25. For all my good intentions, there are days when things go wrong or I fall into old habits. When things are not going well, when I'm grumpy or mad, I'll realize that I've not been paying attention to my soul and I've not been following my best routine.

26. Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dali, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dali.

27. New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.

28. The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free.

29. Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.

30. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.

31. Landlord of a bordello! The company's good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write.

32. Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter.

33. Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!

34. Habit is Heaven's own redress: it takes the place of happiness.

35. The early bird catches the worm. But I have never been one for worms. I am not sure what the late bird catches but I will feast with him today. Probably porridge.

36. The critical period in matrimony is breakfast-time.

37. It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm - this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the 'why' arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.

38. Do not let Sunday be taken from you - If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan.

39. It gets kinda monotonous, but that's television. There are plus sides and down sides. The positive side is that you have steady work for nine months of the year for however many years your show is on TV.

40. My rule always was to do the business of the day in the day.

41. 'But that's just the point,' groaned Bree. 'Do Talking Horses roll? Supposing they don't? I can't bear to give it up. What do you think, Hwin?' 'I'm going to roll anyway,' said Hwin. 'I don't suppose any of them will care two lumps of sugar whether you roll or not.' (ch. 15)

42. You don't believe magic is possible in lives lived within traditional boundaries.

43. Comics day came and went. Another shoes day came and went. And another comics day followed that - the typical production and consumption cycles that help us survice our dismal, meaningless little lives.

44. In the course of an average lifetime anyone growing up in a house with such a clock will hear the tune over a million times.

45. The Muses' friend, Tea, does our fancy aid, Repress the vapours which the head invade, ? And keeps the palace of the soul serene.

46. Il y a peu d'honnetes femmes qui ne soient lasses de leur metier.

47. I'm a tidy sort of bloke. I don't like chaos. I kept records in the record rack, tea in the tea caddy, and pot in the pot box.

48. Believe me, you've got to get up pretty early in the morning if you want to get out of bed.

49. An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

50. Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body. They are infra-human, a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the processes of digestion in a morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called.

51. You sittin' here chained to your rockin' chair.

52. Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.

53. Jack Benny: We're a little late, so good night, folks.

54. Rochester: [checking his equipment] Shaving cream, brush, razor, smelling salts.

55. You eat everyday, you sleep everyday, your body was made to exercise everyday.

56. Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed.

57. Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.

58. Nobody really knows what you're feeling, what you're really going for, what you're really trying to do. Hell, I didn't even know what I was going for. I just knew that I didn't want to be assembly line. (2004)

59. I just want something different. I want to be surprised. I want something that doesn't feel formulaic or beaten to death. (2004)

60. My face - I see it in the mirror when I wash it every morning. It's an okay face. (1988)

61. I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until 'The End.'

62. The day-to-day exhausted me!

63. Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.

64. I push this one button and the shower goes on and I think, where the fuck am I?

65. You don't need to hire a dog therapist, you just need to wake up at 7 am and open the fucking door!

66. I like the smell of armpits in the morning. It's like victory.

67. Routine is the death to heroism.

68. Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

69. I found that I had become so spinsterish that I was made neurotic not only by my life of domesticity but by the slightest derangement of my room. I would burst into a fit of weeping if the kettle was not facing due east.

70. I'm going out to clean the pasture spring; I'll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha'n't be gone long. - You come too.

71. In winter I get up at night And dress by yellow candle-light. In summer quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day.

72. Back to the Army again, sergeant, Back to the Army again: Out o' the cold an' the rain, sergeant, Out o' the cold an' the rain.

73. Wake up tired, Monday mornings suck, It's way too early to catch a bus, Why conform without a fuss, Daddy Daddy, no, I don't wanna go to school, woo!

74. I've taken off two months, three months, at a time, and, by the end, I get really squirrelly. My night life, my dream life, gets extremely populated and crazed.

75. 'Tune in next week, Same Stone Cold Time, Same Stone Cold Channel!' (parody of the most famous Batman ending narration: Tune in next week, Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel!)

76. When the individual's behavior and consciousness get hooked to a routine sequence of external actions, he is a dead robot, and it is time for him to die and be reborn. Time to 'drop out,' 'turn on,' and 'tune in.' This period of robotization is called the Kali Yuga, the Age of Strife and Empire...

77. Lever a six, coucher a dix, Diner a dix, souper a six, Font vivre l'homme dix fois dix.

78. But they all do sort of the same thing, and that is rearrange what you thought was real, and they remind you of the beauty of pretty simple things. You forget, because you're so busy going from a to z, that there's 24 letters in between... You turn on... tune in... and you drop out...

79. Beethoven I take twice a week, Haydn four times, and Mozart every day! ~ Gioacchino Rossini

80. And so to bed.