I make no secret of the fact that I would rather lie on a sofa than sweep beneath it. But you have to be efficient if you're going... to be lazy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Dominique Ballon: You fell off the sofa, you stupid idiot. Inspector Clouseau: I know I fell off the sofa, Madame. There's no... need to tell me--everything I do is carefully planned, Madame.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Though the most beautiful creature were waiting for me at the end of a journey or a walk; though the carpet were of silk, the curt...ains of the morning clouds; the chairs and sofa stuffed with cygnet's down; the food manna, the wine beyond claret, the window opening on Winander Mere, I should not feel--or rather my happiness would not be so fine, as my solitude is sublime.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When he was a crawler he left your feet to journey to the sofa and bring you a ball. When he was a toddler he left your side to jo...urney across the grass and bring you a leaf. When he was a pre-school child he left your yard to journey next door and bring you back a neighbor's doll. Now he will journey into school and bring you back a piece of his new world....His journeys are all outwards now, into that waiting world. But he feels the invisible and infinitely elastic threads that still guide him back to you. He returns to the base that is you, seeking rest and re-charging for each new leap into life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness; we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do; we continue... in it, because we have found a snug sofa at last.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But what is a symbol? A symbol does not direct our attention to something else as a sign does. It does not direct at all. It "mean...s" something else. It somehow comes to contain within itself the thing it means. The word "ball" is a sign to my dog and a symbol to me. If I say "ball" to my dog, he will respond like a good Pavlovian organism and look under the sofa and fetch it. But if I say "ball" to you, you will simply look at me and, if you are patient, finally say, "What about it?" The dog responds to the word by looking for thing; you conceive the ball through the word "ball."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Trains are for meditation, for playing out long thought-processes, over and over; we trust them, perhaps because they have no choi...ce but to go where they are going. Nowadays, however, they smack of a dying gentility. To travel by car makes journeys less mysterious, too much a matter of the will. One might as easily sit on a sofa and imagine a passing landscape. I doubt whether any truly absorbing conversation ever took place in a car; they are good only for word games and long, tedious narratives. We have come to regard cars too much as appendages of our bodies and will probably pay for it in the end by losing the use of our legs. We owe to them the cluttering of the landscape, the breakup of villages and towns.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »