Between The Sheets, or Inter-Cover Brother

      Following this blog's recent post on things I learned from the movies, it seemed only fitting to supply a similar post on the various things I've learned from my readings over the years-enough-to-beggar-counting.   Unfortunately, this list probably won't be as accessible as the movie one, but-- damn it-- this blog never promised to appeal to lowest common denominators, even if it frequently does. (Sn*rk.)   And with no further ado, What I Learned From Literature:

• Embrace 69-ing, because the way up and the way down are the same thing.    (Herakleitos)
  
• There's a reason that reading Margaret Atwood causes one to twitch like Herbert Lom in a Pink Panther movie.   (Atwood, "You Fit Into Me")
  
• It was Dostoevsky that invented the Axe Effect.   (Crime and Punishment)
  
• I feel discomfort, therefore I am.   (How reassuring....)   (Graham Greene, A Burnt-Out Case)
  
• When the going gets tough, the tough get naked.   (King Lear)
  
• Fiddle-dee-dee, tomorrow is another day....    (Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress")
  
• Never, ever, in your otherwise-useless life will people of all stripes be interested in you than when you have a silly metal band wrapped around your finger.   (Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings)
  
• Be careful with your relations, and keep your kids away from the Medea.   (Euripides)
  
• Always keep a hanky handy.   (Othello)
  
• Or, on second thought, maybe not.   (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight)
  
• Thank heaven for little girls.   (Dante, The Commedia)
  
• Or, on second thought, maybe not.   (Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)
  
• Just because something smells like fish doesn't mean you should chase after it.   (Thomas Gray, "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat....")
  
• Apparently, some women can masturbate and write at the same time.   (James Joyce, Ulysses)
  
• Pussy rubbing against a post is indeed a form of worship.   (Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno)
  
• Shock of shocks, life IS a stitch.   (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein)
  
• It's a villanelle world when your whistle blows, and still your kid will want a piece of your time.   (Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night")
  
• Some teachers will do anything to encourage their students.   (Mordecai Richler, Cocksure)
  
• Never, ever, screw around with your boss' daughter.   (The Tempest)
  
• They really do fuck you up, your Mum and Dad.   (Sophocles, Oedipus Rex)
  
• Even the brilliant need a shot in the arm now and again.   (Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes stories)
  
• Driving Miss Daisy isn't as innocuous as it sounds.   (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)
  
• Just because something-- or someone-- says "DRINK ME" doesn't mean that you should.   (Lewis Carroll, Alice In Wonderland; see also Bram Stoker, Dracula)
  
• All in all, everything's just another brick in the wall.   (Edgar Allan Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado")
  
• The cruellest sentences with which one be punished are Faulkner's.   (Absalom, Absalom!)
  
• For God's sake, DON'T throw the baby out with the bathwater.   (George Eliot, Adam Bede)
  
• Sometimes the A just isn't worth it.   (Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter)
  
• Believe it or not, that burning sensation in your loins may mean you're going to Heaven.   (George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan)
  
• And, Leonard Coehn forgive me, don't go home with your pardon.   (William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman)
  
• Give a woman a little romance, and all she'll want is moor, moor, moor.   (Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights)
  
• Give a man a little romance, and all he'll want is More, More, More.   (Robert Bolt, A Man For All Seasons)
  
• If the pen is mightier than the sword, a hardcover copy of Clarissa is mightier than a bulldozer.
  
• All shall be Hell, and all manner of myself shall be Hell.   (John Milton, Paradise Lost)
  
• Some people have a lot more going on upstairs than you'd think.   (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray)
  
• Financial worries will send you right around the bend.   (Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman)
  
• Honey and Pooh: a combination even more magical than chocolate and peanut butter.   (A.A. Milne)
  
• Ladies, despite what they may tell you in Tijuana, taking the worm probably isn't a very good idea.   (Antony and Cleopatra)
  
• An ounce of Pound is a cure for invention.   (The Cantos)
  
• The world's first Surrealist was Henry Howard.   Tottle-ly.   (Yes, RK, I know, no one will get it....)
  
• You can't judge a book by its cover, or its title.   (E.M. Forster, Howards End; Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited; John Mortimer, Rumpole of the Bailey; William Golding, The Lord of the Flies; W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage)
  
• Every man thinks his bat is made of sacred wood-- until the big moment when he swings with it and misses.   Bernard Malamud, The Natural)
  
• All it takes is one snowballing incident to change your life forever.   (Robertson Davies, Fifth Business)
  
  and
  
  
• There's ALWAYS room for Tang.   (Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff)

Well, there we go. Now off the Pork Spew. Essay your own good folks.