Quotes are used as placeholders and mental crutches. They're also funny, which helps the whole 'social awkwardness' thing.
Quotations are what peole use as proverbs, as quick and painless ways to remember and transmit information, and (on occasion) to prop up fallacious sagging arguments and make them appear grander, fuller, and more solid than they actually are. Quotations are verbal push-up bras.
Quotations are also used by geeks in place of wit and social skills. We get them from movies (duh), television, books, magazines, each other...about the normal place you'd find quotable material. Geeks are just as media-saturated, as a group, as any other social subculture. Each individual's repository is different, though. It all depends on what we've watched, what we've read, and so on and so forth. Some people will latch onto entire sentences, and then quote those. I'm more of a mix-and-match kind of gal: if two or three words sound interesting when laid end to end, and they then happen to pass by my eyes or ears, I own those suckers.
I've been asked several times if I write because, as one person put it, “you have such an interesting turn of phrase.” This is further proof that I read odd and out of the way things, and notice and retain even odder things. (If this guy knew my reading list, he wouldn't be half as impressed.) I draw my quotes from:
Books
- The Dark Crystal novelization by A.C.H. Smith
- Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
- Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- Cyteen by C J Cherryh
- Serpent's Reach by C J Cherryh
- MacLendon's Syndrome by Robert Frezza
- Child of a Rainless Year by Jane Lindskold
- Marianne, the Magus and the Manticore by Sheri S. Tepper
Movies & Television
- Real Genius
- Buckaroo Banzai
- Babylon 5
- coming soon
- coming soon
Elsewhere
Peoples' .sigs, Usenet archives, or just about any page that passes in front of my eyes. The eiditic memory is very helpful with the collection.
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