“And since that time, the three of them had enjoyed the kind of life that an oriental despot might envy. Peeled grapes, tapestried barges on the Nile, a long line of nubile activists, the lot”
Ecochondriacs, p. 158
Their Favorite Kind of Lazy River
“He had only been a true believer for a couple of years at the beginning because he had been intelligent enough to figure out what was going on with the numbers. But by the time he figured it out completely, he was already floating on an inner tube down a lazy river of cash grants, and he realized that if he told the world what he now knew, that lazy river of cash grants would go flow somewhere else”
Ecochondriacs, p. 157
There’s a Double Meaning in That
“His slip was starting to show, which meant that his slips were starting to show”
Ecochondriacs, p. 157
Too High and Too Low
“It seems to me that a large part of the troubles and mistakes of our pastoral life come from our having too high an estimate of men’s present condition and too low an estimate of their possibility”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 73
Like Flammable and Inflammable
“But he also had been around long enough to know that he ought to get some other things set in motion regardless. Or irregardless. He was never sure.”
Ecochondriacs, p. 155
Inspiration, Not Comfort
Ineffective pastoral care “tries to meet the misfortunes of life with comfort and not with inspiration . . . The truest help which one can render to a man who has any of the inevitable burdens of life to carry is not to take his burden off but to call out his best strength that he may be able to bear it”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 71
Or Thirteen Maybe
“On the right side was an armchair in which sat one Rocco Williamson, a man who appeared to be about as pleased as a hen with twelve chicks.”
Ecochondriacs, p. 151
Be Both
“The preacher needs to be pastor, that he may preach to real men. The pastor must be preacher, that he may keep the dignity of his work alive. The preacher, who is not a pastor, grows remote. The pastor, who is not a preacher, grows petty . . . Be both; for you cannot really be one unless you also are the other”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 70
Different Thresholds
“Maybe Del Martin wouldn’t want to immolate himself on national television. That was certainly possible. Not everyone can avoid being a sissy”
Ecochondriacs, p. 145
Pronounery
“That had been given to them by an overworked staffer at the DNC who had needed to get a few things off his desk. I use the phrase his desk advisedly because this staffer, now going by Heather, was already transitioning, with fake breasts and everything, and to apply the old pronoun might entail legal difficulties for, as the Victorians would have put it, the present writer. But the legal team for the Satiric Writers Guild is a crackerjack team in every respect, and so I have made the decision to simply proceed. Let it stand. Stet. Whatever the editors may say about it, stet. Where was I?”
Ecochondriacs, p. 132