Quotes from “Word Planes”
at “Love, Lust and New York”:
“Those who say, “We make our own bread” probably never heard of destiny.”
“Men’s lives are simpler. Women have to deal with the question, “which shade?” every waking moment.”
“I respect cats. I have worked with some myself. And they are welcome in my home anytime but, no disrespect, a cat can never be a dog. This is the difference: cats make you want to stay in bed and indulge yourself in all things you love. Five minutes with a dog and you want to step out and change the world. Cats make you take. Dogs make you give. Cats know what they are doing. Dogs don’t even have an idea the effect they have on you. Cats are disinformation. Dogs are the truth.”
“Gift an eraser with a note: “From one STEM kid to another”.
“Hammock is monologue. Seesaw is dialogue. Roller-coaster is drama. Accident is action. Rescue is thriller. Death is awards season. Happy-ending is box-office. Work is love. I like writing sitting at the kitchen table.”
“Predictive modeling is one thing. True love is another.”
“I have a thing with scholars of religions. They see phallic symbols in everything. It’s hard.”
“When you pair a knee-length skirt with knee-high boots, and walk your walk, we see periodic glimpses of your genius where they two meet and part at every step.”
“Geostationary satellite is being delusional. Everything Bagel is not being humble. Fine print is not fine. Fuzzy logic is not all that fuzzy.”
“She had her poppy-seed strudel. I had my misery. She read “The Promised Land”. I am still looking for mine.”
“This is how best I can explain the word, ‘quandary’: you want the full-moon to come up and adorn the sky while you are with her. But she needs to get back to her place before moon can come up. Would you pray the full moon never came up or would you pray she just leave? Predicament. ‘Duvidha’ in Hindi. As in “WTF!! What kind of a duvidha is this?!!”
“If you ask someone, “When do you want this?” and if he says, “Yesterday”, slap him hard and say, “Oo, sorry, that’s not me. That’s me from the future.”
“Some girls wear snug-fit. Some wear smug-fit.”
“This is how you can make mistakes and get away with it: identify yourself as stupid.”
“I just can’t wait to meet a beautiful woman and tell her, “Meet me at the post office”.
“Think of destiny as this nameless village in the Wild West that you can’t find on the map. The buggy is any given day in your life. The horses are your emotions. Your intuition is the rope. Your wristwork is the choices you make every second. There, I said it all. Don’t ask me where I am from and how I got here.”
““Citizen Kane” is crap but “Rosebud” is a cool name for a diner. Turtlenecks are overrated but Steve Jobs was cool.”
“If I had a girl, I would call her a cat. As in, “My cat is out with her girlfriends,” “My cat is a Swiftie who can code,” “Oh, no, my cat is purring in the bed again,” “STOP talking to me like that or I will put my cat on phone!!!”
“There are things you buy. Then there are things you buy just because they came in that yellow.”
“Sufficiently advanced AI is no match for plain bad writing.”
“Caesar is such a lovely name for the chimp in “The Rise of the Planet of the Apes”.”
“You must be having a million thoughts in your head. How can you put them all in such a small laptop?”
“From now on I shall refer to my fountain pen as ‘my blade’. As in, “Can my blade talk!!”, ‘My blade is always hungry”, “Oh, no, my cat is purring in the bed again. She needs my blade!”
“Sometimes you have to watch an English film dubbed into a foreign language with English subtitles on, if you want to understand what’s wrong with America’s energy policy.”
“Think of disinformation like this: somebody spits on your face. You don’t mind because it landed right inside your mouth. You spit on someone else’s face. They don’t mind because it landed inside their mouth. And it goes on. And this is how disinformation stops: by closing your mouth.”
“One look at a peacock and you can learn everything out there about blues and greens not acting like black and white.”
“If you want to know the character of a man, give him power and see what he does with it. If you want to know the character of a woman, tell her you love her and see what she does with it. Psychology is all about empowering people and sitting and watching. To men, power is power. To women, love is power.”
“Show me the ugliest fashion accessory in the world and I will show you a cross-body pouch. It was invented so you can look at it and use the same to puke into. Form follows function. See?”
“Gandhi didn’t say, “Got milk?”. He said, “Got goats?””
“If her eyes are of copper sulfate blue and if your words had a corroding effect on her morale, they will shed tears and turn green by morning, the iron sulfate green.”
“The survivor guilt was so intense among war veterans that they bought huge Harley-Davidsons immediately upon returning home.”
“You know how they say a good dress is like a poem? Well, you can always find me in an abandoned factory.”
“Does the anvil have any job other than being ‘on the anvil’?”
“I work in AI,” she said. “That’s the best pick up line I ever heard,” said I.”
“Impermanence is a thing.””
“One often wonders what it is that makes a convincing romance. Pure romance. Not rom-com. Rom-com is a cop out. Rom-com is when pure romance realizes it can’t succeed in its mission but gotta keep a funny face so investment can be recouped. Rom-com is street-smart. Pure romance is punishment. And like iron that meets its shape and purpose only by going through fire, it burns, dies and stands up without a murmur when it’s time to meet its raison d’être. To write rom-com, one needs only intelligence. To pen pure romance, one needs intelligence, war, economics, history, philosophy, politics, psychology, probability, naysayers and near-death to come together to guide oneself. Rom-com is ice-skating. Pure romance is digging your way out of Shawshank Prison. “Casablanca”. “The English Patient”. “Out of Africa”. “In The Mood for Love”. “A Little Romance”. “Il Postino”. “A Walk In The Clouds”. “Untamed Heart”. “Edward Scissorhands”. “Chocolat”. “The Bridges of Madison County”. “Benny & Joon”. “Shakespeare In Love”. “Amadeus”. “Million Dollar Baby”. “Ford v Ferrari”. Some that tried hard. Presenting yet another gem that did: “Cinema Paradiso”. In the original ‘New Version’ Director’s Cut. In all its 173 glorious Italian minutes. Not the butchered cut of 124 minutes. Come, taste love. Not gossip. Love is not what you have when it comes in but what you do when it does. Verb your nouns for deeper meanings. Love. For what we do in love echoes in eternity.”
“Pendants talk. Tiny whispers, always. You gotta really listen.”
“Math is the mother language. Every other subject sucks at math’s teats. Buy your math major friend a cake. Now.”
“Why is ‘Destiny’ always a woman’s name?”
“A ponytail has a mind of its own.”
“This is how best I can explain “Fail-Safe” mechanism in cutting-edge technologies: You tell your girl she is the best kisser in the world. Even when you have kissed only one girl in your entire life.”
“Conveyor belt thinks everyone is stupid. It keeps repeating itself.”
“Purple is pink that has lost all its shame to pursue its worldly passions. Brown is pink that never did and regretted not doing it. Pink is just pink. You never know what it has on its mind.”
“When somebody holds you prisoner to a one-sided conversation, excuse yourself to use the restroom. And don’t return.”
“Bread-butter continuum.”
“Love in the time of fiscal hesitancy.”
“Vespa is to two-wheelers what Converse is to shoes. And Mini Coopers to cars.”
“When you are very hungry and don’t have money for food, go for a long walk along the avenues with the most beautiful sidewalk restaurants. You will become a better writer. (Don’t do it too often. You will become a communist). And if it is fiction you are after, review in detail the food you didn’t eat. And if it’s poetry, live in a room above a French bakery.”
“You don’t expect people to like self-flagellation but you want industries to embrace self-regularization. Sure.”
“Anything would make sense, if you slapped the right soundtrack on.”
“Why spell one way and pronounce in another? It’s like the French kissing on the cheeks. What’s the point? You either do it or you don’t. You don’t duh!”
“Some wish to find true love without running the risk of shame. It’s like wishing to make passionate love without wanting to get undressed. Sure.”
“A good bag can make your day. A great bag makes everyone’s day.”
“‘Side boob’ is a full sentence.”
“Humans are the only animals that refuse to be themselves.”
“Just give me sand. I am not so crazy about the sands of time.”
“Kubrick’s script for his Bonaparte film was on display at MoMA.”
“Dunkin’ Donuts dropped Donuts. Even they didn’t know how to dunk without dropping.”
“Why is Tom Cruise always asking people to open the door? -”Open the door, Benjie”, “Open the door, June.” He should really stop running so much and open doors for himself.”
“We have been sending radio signals into space for decades with the hope to receive a signal back from some intelligent life out there. And everyone goes crazy when I look at women even for a second.”
“Potential Energy must have grown up with ADHD. Nobody ever recognizes its existence.”
“There are critics of Mills and Boons. There are critics of Pure Reason. Can somebody introduce them to each other?”
““Sunshine State”, “Garden State”, “Empire State”, “Evergreen State” -I am yet to come across a car plate, “Just a State”.”
“How do you plead?” / “First, I will take her to a nice restaurant.”
“I once went to a potluck. With my script-book copies.”
“When the French converse among themselves, it sounds like they are all whispering some state secrets while politely hiding hemorrhoids pain. When the Germans talk with one another, it sounds like they are not happy with the way the economy is going and they need stronger beer. When Italians talk, it feels like they are all going to go home and have a lot of group sex. When Americans talk, it is like they have given up on healthcare and ready to die. When Chinese talk, it sounds like one of them stole a chicken from another and everyone is angry with both. When Indians talk, it sounds like they can’t wait to watch the really bad Bollywood film that just turned out to be a blockbuster to everyone’s surprise. When the Japanese talk, wait, the Japanese don’t talk, they just work.”
“She makes my heart feel like the second cousin to Achille’s heel.”
“What the mainstream media doesn’t tell you is full moons have a toll on people.”
“If garrulous is here, could quarrelsome be far behind?”
“Throw butter into everything. Even sex.”
“Two kinds of people in this world: those who believe in love. And those who eventually will.”
“Existentialism begins with grocery shopping.”
“Those who listen to people who talk endlessly without actually saying anything are the same people who try to make memories on birthdays by getting so drunk that nobody can remember what happened. Creating nothing by spending money and time is an art form.”
“Caramel custard can. Caramel custard will.”
““Mothered” sounds spiritual. “Fathered” is all physical. “Neighbored” is porn.”
“Mini Cooper S Convertible in Chili Red for her. Vespa Primavera 150 for him.”
“Community gardens must be kept open during nights. People cry exclusively at nights.”
“Pizza comes in a big box. Because, when someone grabs it from you and runs, he can’t run far. Think.”
“Artist-in-residence. Real artists on the road.”
“Why is ‘Faith’ always a woman’s name and ‘Dick’ a man’s?”
“Creating happiness with nothing at all is the mark of real men.”
“When someone says he/she is a train-wreck, quickly give him/her a real tight slap. They will confess they were lying.”
“If you truly want to understand the power of marketing, watch a comedy act by the very successful Kevin Hart or watch a film starring the super successful Adam Driver.”
“She wears red flats. Blood red. Think of a dagger tracing back its path out of a heart. Get the picture.”
“Next time someone says, “It’s in there somewhere,” just place your hand on your belt buckle. Say nothing. Just place your hand. And look confident.”
“Sometimes you don’t die. You just wait for the next person to come and take the baton from you. You are not relieved till then. “
“Most ‘New York moment’ moments are just stupid. Just like how most people are idiots. Wait, because.”
“Buy fruit.”
“Should I get a white cow with black spots or a black cow with white spots?!”
“Boy meets girl. Girl breaks heart. Boy hates girls. Girls love boy now. Very straightforward.”
“Act tough. Say you are from the Bronx. Cut your upper lip. Mention the street number. Or, just act normal. Say nothing. Don’t cut lip.”
“Things that never go out of fashion: Safety pins. Rubber bands. Pencils. Post-It notes. True love. Idiots in majority. Originals on the run.”
“‘Trapezoidal’ needs a simpler name. Like the shape is not confusing enough already. As a rule, the harder something is to understand, the simpler its name should be. Love. Women. Attendance. Math.”
“Walk into a room and say, “They deserved it!!”. And when they inquire, “Who?!! What?!”, just look at every face and walk out of the room. Hurt people. Ruin the room tone.”
“Transfixed but fixed it eventually.”
“Next time someone wishes you ‘holidays filled with cheer and laughter’, take it in writing.”
“Love comes to those who respond to love.”
“For all I know, the Tank Man of Tiananmen Square was just searching for a free public Wi-Fi and got tired of the system. These things happen.”
“Sustainable development: don’t even open your mouth.”
“This is how you can silence the voices in your head: eat food.”
““Date. Buy yourself a nice fall sweater, at least,” I keep telling myself.”
“The name, ‘Fiona’ always reminds me of the movie, “Shrek”. And, ‘Olive’ of “Little Miss Sunshine”. And, ‘June’ of “Knight and Day”. And ‘Summer’ of “500 Days of…something, I forget.”
“She had a dizzy feeling. I had the usual kind.”
“Two kinds of people in this world: those with French fries in their hands and those who don’t want to get caught looking.”
“Market sentiment -I always wanted to see what it is like in person. Anti-war sentiment, I can picture: guy with Trader Joe’s bag standing in the path of a war tank.”
“It’s an honor being part of the carbon family. Strong ties. Not like sodium that is ready to f*ck at the drop of hat.”
“When someone says, “by any stretch,” request them to use hand gestures.”
“If it’s not ill-conceived, trust me, it’s not fun. Ask my parents.”
“Don’t waste food. Snatch it from people who look too happy already.”
“Love is a four letter word. Type it slowly or you will get it all wrong.”
“In a brazen attack. Like the killers stepped out of home with guns and naked.”
“If it’s twins, give high tens. Impress them with your math.”
“When someone says, “I don’t care”, look closely into their eyes and say, “Can we at least order a dessert?” Works all the time. Suckers.”
“When someone brings the whole country to a standstill, move a little bit. Wiggle your toes. Upset people.”
“If you hear voices in your head, trust me, they are all merely speculating.”
“Act cool. Eat fries.”
“Put the STEM kids in place. Take their calculators away.”
“When someone says, “let me break it for you,” take two steps back. Be dramatic.”
“Be stupid; cut across the class divide.”
“Next time someone says, “Do your math”, say, “Watch your language.” Next time someone says, “It’s very organic”, say, “Prove it.” Next time someone says, “It’s a paradigm shift,” say, “Expound.” Next time someone says, “It’s freezing in here,” just laugh, say nothing.”
“Red Velvet is a pleaser. Tries too hard. Red Velvet is a failed exercise in imagination that found a niche in the market.”
“I don’t know how but every year, New York women end up losing all their savings just as summer approaches. They can’t even afford a bra.”
“You can’t ask a man to eat his veggies first when all he has on his plate is veggies.”
“Wonder why people buy whiteboards when the whole wall can be a whiteboard.”
“For a film on A-bomb inventor, “Oppenheimer” is a mosquito bite. Have people no faith in linear storytelling anymore?!”
“Even the biggest of libraries come with no coffee machines. It’s a conspiracy. Ditto, cafes offering seats without backrests.”
“If I die in sleep in your lap, would I be reborn and wake up as your baby?”
“When you say, “he got a great right hook,” it’s an action film. When you say, “she got a great right hook,” it’s a romantic comedy. When you make both these statements in one go, it’s sexist.”
“Will the standing committee raise, please? Wait, my bad.”
“They say art is the most intense mode of individualism the world has known. And while every job in the world can be an art in the hands of the doer, individualism is still suspect. One look at the disparity between what we worship in books and films and what we embrace in real life and we all know where we stand. Individualism is trouble. Original thinking is a concern. Conscience is annoyance. Get out. Conformism is professional. Partisan is playbook. Hunting in packs is new-age. And yet arts continue to fight back. “Cool Hand Luke”, “On the Waterfront”, “High Noon”, “12 Angry Men”, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “Dead Poets Society”, “Professor Marston and The Wonder Women”, “Tucker: Man & His Dream”, “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”, “Six Degrees of Separation”, “Thelma and Louise”, “Trumbo”, “Captain Fantastic”. Arts always fought back. To uphold what practical living can’t afford to. To preserve individual dignity. Soul’s right to breathe. To let you be. Once in a while, at least. For a fraction of a second, if even. And that little window in an isolated cell for an individual can be a whole wall removed for mankind one day. And if you don’t let that little tuft of grass grow through that crack in the concrete, you are suppressing every scream for freedom that art is. And art is in everything we choose to do in our damnedest lives.”
“There are backpacks you carry. Then there are crosses you carry.”
“Every time they say, “markets rallied,” I picture people in Fortune-500 T-shirts trying to outrun one another the moment the whistle blows in Boston Marathon.”
“Hanna is always pining for love. Hannah always feels content. Spelling makes a difference, see?”
“You can’t drink. You can’t fight. Can you eat?” -“Pure Country” (1992). How can such mundane words sound so lyrical?!”
“She is just a little girl trapped in a tall body,” I tell myself every time I cross paths with a volleyball player.”
“Recurring fantasy: I run into someone. They take me to the nearest Apple Store. We walk out with the most expensive iPhone. No dialogue.”
“She had an episode. I had cake.”
“This is the image that comes to my mind when I think of the words, “the uninformed”: A thousand people sitting quietly in a dark theater waiting for the show to begin; and they have been sitting there for years.”
“The Thinker” got too much popularity. It’s just a misunderstood statue. For all I know he must be thinking, “What to do about dinner?”.”
“New York runs on corner delis. World runs on TikTok. Me on love.”
“The idea is to remain poor enough to pursue writing.”
“Meet me in the hallway. Only if it has Parthenon-like columns supporting the structure, though.”
“Instant Pot recipes are literature.”
“Oversized shirt pairs well with nothing. Nothing pairs gorgeously with knee-high boots.”
“I can live in a bakery.”
“Schrödinger’s cat is seeing a therapist. Or not.”
“Every time I think of Virginia Woolf, I can only picture her in Maine. Is this normal?”
“Pass the sugar, honey. Er, pass the honey, sugar. Er, honey, please come sit next to me, sugar.”
“Just like how people are adding ‘she/they’ ‘he/him’ after names, we need people’s SNR, Signal-to-Noise ratio, too stated outright: amount of rubbish out of every 100 words spoken. Just so we know whom to treat patiently and kindly.”
“What’s for breakfast?!” / “Verbs”.
“Every time the poster announced, “A Searing Romance” I ran to the nearest theater and slapped them hard with my kiddie bank coins.”
“Is the pixie-cut to hair what polkas are to dresses?”
“If paper were edible, one could eat one’s own words, no?”
“Wear the apron. Just the apron. And I promise I will do the dishes.”
“Next time Apple Store says it can recycle your phone for free, say, “that’s a good one”.”
“It is certain Schröder is at his piano. It is uncertain where Schrödinger is.”
“Put the STEM kids in place. Take their calculators away again.”
“Give a nice story idea on a single sheet of paper and Aaron Sorkin will masturbate into it repeatedly until all you can see and smell is his semen, and call it ‘An Aaron Sorkin Film’. And you can’t say he ruined the film ‘single-handedly’ or he will find you, come to your house, and ask you for another sheet of paper. And people have been giving him sheets of paper for too long. In stead, give the same story idea on a sheet of paper to Christopher Nolan. He will tear it into 100 little pieces, drop them from the top of a 120-story building, and give you a screenplay in the same order the pieces of paper fall on ground, and call it ‘A Christopher Nolan Film”. So what do you do? You take the same original story idea on a single sheet of paper to Wes Anderson. He will lose it on his way to Ikea, lie about it, and give you a toy house made with Ikea paperboards, and call it “A Wes Anderson Film”. And that’s when you realize you should instead take that original story idea on a single sheet of paper to Greta Gerwig. She will take it from you, conference-call Saoirse Ronan, Timothy Chalamet and Margot Robbie, put them on hold, ask her husband to shut up and listen, call her professor at Barnard to check if she can still use her library card, and use your sheet of paper as a bookmark for the classic novel she would borrow to write a screenplay that has every single page and character from the book in the same order and call it “A Greta Gerwig Film”. And that’s when you wise up and take the same original story on a single sheet of paper to A24 Films. They will take it quietly, source the semen-tarnished paper bits from Sorkin, random paper bits from Nolan, paperboards from Wes Anderson’s toy-house, classic novel settings from Greta Gerwig, bring in a Korean director, slap an eerie soundtrack, make $100M at box office in horror genre, attract a $4B acquisition bid from Apple, get a few Oscars using mothership’s marketing muscle, and say you are a racist for not recognizing their multinational cast, if you say you don’t understand their films. And that’s when you realize you should just send Aaron Sorkin a box of paper napkins, Nolan a kaleidoscope, Wes Anderson a nice summer dress, and Greta Gerwig a Kindle with some of the tuition money you saved from dropping out of MIT, and use the rest to make your own film and release it through A24.”
“Save up. Keep faith. Fight hard. If all you can do is crawl, crawl.”
<More soon>
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From the Same Author:
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The Philosophy of Bollywood Song
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Quotes from “What Makes One Beautiful”
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