Post brief quotes from fiction/narrative/whatever

"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no more sea. And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of Heaven, saying, 'Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them; and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.'”

Rev. 21:1-4, NKJV

"As of 2019, [Stevie Nicks] told Rolling Stone that her temperature-controlled shawl vault -- really let those words sink in -- numbers in the quadruple digits."

— some allegedly "comic" website known for nonexistent copywriting or competent editing

Zoe (referring to both the ship and herself): "She's tore up plenty, but she'll fly true."

Serenity

"Dee, I swear you would be of more use to me if I skinned you and turned your skin into a lampshade. Or fashioned you into a piece of high-end luggage. I could even add you to my collection!"

— It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Wash: "Let's go back to the part where Jayne gets knocked out by a ninety-pound girl, 'cause I don't think that's ever gonna get old."

Serenity

"Officer Margaret Sereno : Do I threaten your masculinity McCloud?
Sam McCloud : No. Do I threaten yours?"

— McCloud, "The Park Avenue Rustlers"

Pvt. Hudson: "Hey, Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?"
Pvt. Vasquez: "No. Have you?"

Aliens

Good response! Full marks!

“I only sleep with men on the first date.”

— Le nom de gens, movie

Wash: "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."

Serenity

“Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.”

— somebody

Jayne: "We're gonna explode!? I don't wanna explode!"

Serenity

"When 'The Beastmaster' begins, it is very hard to tell what it is all about. An hour later, it is very hard to care what it is all about. Another hour later, it is very hard to remember what it was all about."

— *Variety*, contemporary review of the movie *The Beastmaster*

Love it! Best one-word movie review ever, for the 1980 rock fantasy Xanadu: "Xanadon't."

Next up:

Jayne: "Shiny! Let's be bad guys."

Serenity

"If you’re sad about the Queen, no matter your nationality, it requires some deep introspection. What are you sad about? What do you feel like we lost? A piece of history already so thoroughly documented? A reminder of what imperialism looked like back when whiteness, wealth, and European domination were even more pronounced than it currently is?"

— some published rant whose provenance is unremembered

"...Back when we were just beginning to navigate life as President and First Lady, she welcomed us to the world stage with open arms and extraordinary generosity. Time and again, we were struck by her warmth, the way she put people at ease, and how she brought her considerable humor and charm to moments of great pomp and circumstance.... Like so many of you, Michelle and I are grateful to have witnessed Her Majesty’s dedicated leadership, and we are awed by her legacy of tireless, dignified public service. Our thoughts are with her family and the people of the United Kingdom at this difficult time."

Former President Barack Obama, Sept. 8, 2022

"People in Milwaukee eat raw beef sandwiches with onion."

— Buzzfeed

Jayne: "I just don't get it. How's a man get so wrong? Cuttin' on his own face, rapin' and murdering. Hell, I'll kill a man in a fair fight... or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight. Or if he bothers me. Or if there's a woman. Or if I'm gettin' paid. Mostly only when I'm gettin' paid. But these Reavers... last ten years they show up like the Bogeyman from stories. Eating people alive? Where's that get fun?"

Serenity

"For you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”

— 1 Thessalonians 5:2, KJV

/* edit: looking up in the Wordsworth critical edition of the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate print copy, from 1.Ad.Thessalonicenses.5.1: "De temporibus autem et momentis, fratres, non indigetis ut scribamus uobis. Ipso enim diligenter scitis, quia dies Domini sicur fur in nocte, ita ueniet." AFAIC, one of the few translations of the NT one should bother with. */

Jayne (of River Tam): "She is starting to damage my calm!"

Serenity

"Sure, you got drunk. That’s the best excuse in the world for losing. No trouble losing when you got a good excuse. And winning! That can be heavy on your back too. Like a monkey. You drop that load too when you got an excuse. All you gotte do is learn to feel sorry for yourself. It’s one of the best indoor sports: feeling sorry for yourself — a sport enjoyed by all, especially the born losers."

— *The Hustler*

Mr. Universe: "It was a very beautiful ceremony. Lenore wrote her own vows. I cried like a baby. A hungry, angry baby."

Serenity

"These socks cost more than your life and your car combined. I'm not putting them on your goddamned floor, sir: the shoes stay on."

— Herzog

Mr. Universe (watching a video of River taking down dozens of men in a bar): "You guys always bring me the very best violence."

Serenity

"Another [incident] came at the 1990 World Championship; after losing his first-round match to Steve James, [Alex Higgins] punched tournament official Colin Randle in the abdomen before the start of a press conference at which he announced his retirement, and abused the media as he left. This followed another incident at the World Cup, where he repeatedly argued with fellow player and compatriot Dennis Taylor, and threatened to have him shot. For his conduct, Higgins was banned for the rest of the season and all of the next."

— Alex Higgins, Wikipedia

Sounds like quite the charmer.

Mr. Universe: "Bring it on, bring it on, bring it on. From here to the eyes and the ears of the 'verse, that's my motto. Or at least it would be, if I start having a motto."

Serenity

"Going down on a woman gives me a stiff neck, going down on a man gives me lockjaw, and conventional sex gives me claustrophobia."

— T.Bankhead, possibly apocryphal

Mr. Universe: "Can't stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere."

Serenity

"What's the story with that dog?
— What?
That dog!
— Oh, him? That's the dog that saved Charlestown from the flood in 1938."

— Slap Shot

The Operative: "This is a good death. There's no shame in this, in a man's death. A man who has done fine works. We’re making a better world. All of them, better worlds."

Serenity

"In real life [an] incident occurred in Utica, New York, in a game between the Johnstown Jets and the Mohawk Valley Comets. Jeff Carlson was hit in the face by a cup of ice thrown by a Utica fan and went into the stands after the fan with brothers Jack and Steve. All three were arrested and Dave Hanson gathered the money for bail for the Carlson brothers."

— from the Wikipedia page about the movie Slap Shot

The Operative: "You should have let me see [the ship Serenity], Captain. We should have done this as men. Not with fire."

Serenity

"Smeared with gums of glutinous heat, I touch with chaste palms moist and cold. Now the spell hath lost his hold; And I must haste ere morning hour To wait in Amphitrite's bower."

— Milton's Comus. Yes, we all chuckled about it in a small seminar dedicated to Milton by medieval specialist Millie Clark. I think I was the only Comp. Lit. grad student there, the rest were English Lit. people, but we had some scholarly fun. Obviously, the reference was obvious, but only Prof. Clark had the skills to work Milton's dense Latin political prose and field questions about relevant contemporary material and precedence among the classical authors.

I've gained it since, but that is, indeed, why one requires teachers to demonstrate what is possible.

Indeed.

Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."

Serenity

"Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;
it provokes the desire, but it takes
away the performance: therefore, much drink
may be said to be an equivocator with lechery:
it makes him, and it mars him"

— MacBeth (my favorite of the Shakespeare plays, I guess, especially as Toussaint's Day comes 'round)

Macbeth is a favorite of mine, too. And considering that it's Oct. 25:

"He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day."

Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii

"Hum, or say the word 'DO' while blowing."

— L250 Ignition Interlock User's Guide

Kaylee: "Don’t pay anybody in advance. And don’t ride in anything with a Capissen 38 engine, they fall right out of the sky."

Serenity

"You don't see a bachelorette party coming: you hear it."

— Iliza Schlesinger

The Operative: "River was your greatest success. A prodigy. A phenomenon. Until her brother walked in here and took her from you."

Serenity

"Ordinary commercial software was never intended to be used in systems which people’s lives depend on."

— part of The Dawn Project's mission statement, as found on their website

The Operative: "Madness? Have you looked at this scan carefully, Doctor? At his face? It's love, in point of fact, something a good deal more dangerous."

Serenity

"I'm not the most politically active person but I'm trying to get better about that. What I've been doing is just showing up to any given rally and marching with a sign that just says, ‘Yeah, totally.’"

— comedian Tig Notaro

The Operative: “'Key members of Parliament.' Key. The minds behind every military, diplomatic and covert operation in the galaxy, and you put them in a room with a psychic."

Serenity

"Alright, listen up! I don't like white people. I hate rednecks. You people are rednecks. That means I'm enjoyin this shit."

— 48 Hours

The Operative: "Secrets are not my concern. Keeping them is."

Serenity

“Hold up, hold up. Let me explain something to you. I have this medical condition, when you cut out my carbs, my foot goes right up your ass... I don’t know what it is!’”

— some bit from comedienne Wanda Sykes

The Operative: "You know, in certain older civilized cultures, when men failed as entirely as you have, they would throw themselves on their swords."
Dr. Mathias: "Well, unfortunately, I forgot to bring a sword—"
The Operative pulls out a sword.

Serenity

"Everyone is shaving their pussy. Mainly women. Everyone is shaving their pussy. And hipsters, the hipsters these days, they have beards. So society has the same amount of hair, just on different cunts."

— Jimmy Carr : His Dark Material (comedian doing a thing on Netflix)

^ A keen tonsorial observation, that.

The Operative: "Would you be killed in your sleep like an ailing pet?"

Serenity

"Hi, all three types of fabrics are very durable, but cotton is recommended to prevent large dogs damages, because cotton one is made of thickened fabrics. Thanks."

— manufacturer's response to a query about KING MOUNTAIN Iron-on Repair Patch