During Leonard’s memorial I mentioned the Clarion wall. During Clarion we stuck a bunch of crazy quotes on the wall of our common room. Words from critiques and sometimes just from random conversations. In the center was “Screw being a time traveling researcher, I want to be a writer.”

I’m staying with the marvelous Ed and Nicole and Nicole has saved many of the quotes. Some people took quotes of personal significance away with them at the end of Clarion, but all the others Nicole preserved and put in a gorgeous scrap book. Looking at them makes me laugh out loud, remember, or think what on earth?

In no particular order, here’s the contents of Nicole’s scrapbook, you can imagine or guess who said what.

• What is the planet’s motivation?
• I think it would annoy me if there were grammar
• I’m wearing latex
• I don’t expect to be blown
• People always say, “Show, Don’t tell.” But of course they don’t mean it.
• This noodle salad is my brother
• Not the unicorn, it’s the south
• Anyone who pelvic thrusts in silhouette during their Land-Rights-Themed Music video, well I’d vote for them
• I wont to see more psychological realism from your death ape…
• I love your space fish! More than your people
• Direction burn
• I was hoping for Heart of Darkness and I got maybe Gallbladder of Darkness
• You burned my midget saxophone
• Kicking Robin might be fun!
• Fish-job bro-core
• He’s fucked the starship, now where is he?
• (Beer Coaster from the Rock Bottom) She looses her purse, Curly hair drops in his lap, Brown Chicken Brown Cow
• More peril and more ‘tude!
• I’m trying to avoid the fetal elephant in the room
• I’ve got this Mjolnir and I’m just bashing everything
• You have the right to create your own zombies
• It’s like a ham sandwich talking to a duck
• Well, originally ‘dead prostitute’ was working for me
• Momie’s in my refrigerator
• Screw you science bastards
• You hit it like a telepathic sex goblin
• Eeeergggh, I’m a sad brain
• Maybe he’s an asparagus corpse
• Kudos for lava
• Hot wax on nipples
• He’s going into the world as an unskilled dirty old man
• I have let down the Picard.
• The only think I like as much as zombie space pirates is gender-bending goblin-boning.
• Yeah, press that wafer in
• If you were a stripper I wouldn’t hire you
• I have these secret thoughts which you cannot know… but they’re very intense
• Zygote porn
• Squirrel ex-machina
• “And then I died.” We’ll kill you if you do that.
• Tentacle porn with a Harlequin ending
• I’m sorry I have to be the first one to talk about you



• And he grows a beard of sadness
• An asshole is an older, non-sexual douchebag
• I thought his job was eating sandwiches
• Why do we have Agamemnon’s G-string under the sofa?
• Balls-to-the-wall slapstick weird-ass shit
• The duck goosed the swan
• I don’t need a whole lotta meat
• You know… never mind
• Seventeen pages of navel-gazing – but this guy’s navel is a crazy rabbit hole
• It’s hard to gross me out, but…
• Is the dragon dressed as a spider?
• There’s got to be this moment, baby… credit cards
• I’m not asking you a direct question. It’s a stealth rhetorical question.
• A story about a cult that worships aliens, I hope that’s not a metaphor for Clarion!