Truth Tellers of Pop Culture

From the movie Go:

Claire (Katie Holmes): So what do you have against The Family Circus?

Todd (Timothy Olyphant): Ok, so you sit down to read your paper, and you're enjoying your entire two-page comic spread, right? And then... then there's The Family Fucking Circus, bottom right corner, just waiting to suck, and that's the last thing you read, so it spoils everything you read before it."

Claire: ...You could just not read it.

Todd: I hate it... yet I'm uncontrollably drawn to it.

From the movie The Cruise:

Timothy "Speed" Levitch: It made me think of the fact that in terms of molecular biology, we have the same infrastructure as plants, so this whole entire notion of individuality is a delusion anyway. It's a direful delusion- there is no real individuality except that which we project.

But sitting in that cellblock, I realized that the pursuit of that so-called individuality is everything I believe in... The fullest pursuit of those possibilities, of that "individuality," even if it is an absolute failure, it is the most beautiful failure I can think of.

I don't care if it's a delusion. I don't care if we have the same infrastructure as plants. I want to be the plant that grows the highest. I want to be the beanstalk.

From Odd Thomas, by Dean Koontz:

"Granny Sugars believed in bargaining with God. She called Him 'that old rug merchant.'

Before every poker game, she promised God to spread His holy word or to share her good fortune with orphans in return for a few unbeatable hands. Throughout her life, winnings from card games remained a significant source of income.

Being a hard-drinking woman with numerous interests in addition to poker, Granny Sugars didn't always spend as much time spreading God's word as she promised Him that she would. She believed that God expected to be conned more often than not and that He would be a good sport about it.

You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next.

He'll also cut you some slack if you're astonishingly stupid in an amusing fashion. Granny claimed that this explains why uncountable millions of breathtakingly stupid people get along just fine in life."

From Conan O'Brian's commencement speech to the Harvard class of 2000:

"I've had a lot of success. I've had a lot of failure. I've looked good. I've looked bad. I've been praised. And I've been criticized. But my mistakes have been necessary. I've dwelled on my failures today because, as graduates of Harvard, your biggest liability is your need to succeed, your need to always find yourself on the sweet side of the bell curve. Success is a lot like a bright white tuxedo. You feel terrific when you get it, but then you're desperately afraid of getting it dirty, of spoiling it."
(read the whole speech here)

Sheryl Crow, "Soak Up the Sun"

I don't have digital
I don't have diddlysquat
It's not having what you want
It's wanting what you've got