I have a penchant for quoting. I think it started in high school when I received my first "Book of Quotations," because quotes are a good way for a beginner to open a paper. Quotes continued to be useful in college. I used them in an endless trail of English papers peppered with quotes to support my thesis.
And now, I have quotes everywhere - I throw them everywhere. On iGoogle I have 4 automated quotes daily: Churchill, Jon Stewart, Steve Colbert, and a random one. I email them. I blog them. And I throw them out in class.
Well, I'm here to give warning, and you CJ girls listen hard, that you should be certain of who you quote before you toss it in the ring. Because I in Grad school, in"The City in Literature" class, was engaged in a literary conversation and I saw a parallel. It was from a movie. And this should have been my first sign to proceed with caution. But no. I shared my paraphrase, and I cited my source as some western movie - I can't remember. And I honestly couldn't.
But they all could. I in an intellectual conversation, paraphrased a quote from Curly in City Slickers. We all laughed. And that pretty much was the final touch on that topic. Apparently quotes are good at closing things, too.
2 comments:
All my best quotes come from silly movies these days. I think I would be in real trouble in the academic setting today. That's great...what quote did you paraphrase?
Dear anon,
It was the fantastic line about him falling in love with a woman he was watching hang laundry.
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