Linux Literature

Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever
skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious
to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an
overdose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic
apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless
as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a
steroid-free fitness center.
                -- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.  The world owes you
nothing.  It was here first.
                -- Mark Twain

"Elves and Dragons!" I says to him.  "Cabbages and potatoes are better
for you and me."
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien

English literature's performing flea.
                -- Sean O'Casey on P.G. Wodehouse

Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at
fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution.  Take
the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you have witnesses, you will
find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil,
you will say that she did it with her teeth.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

Every cloud engenders not a storm.
                -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"

Every why hath a wherefore.
                -- William Shakespeare, "A Comedy of Errors"

Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.
                -- William Shakespeare, "The Rape of Lucrece"

F.S. Fitzgerald to Hemingway:
        "Ernest, the rich are different from us."
Hemingway:
        "Yes.  They have more money."

Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is
oblivion.
                -- Mark Twain