I seem to be on a blogging roll today. This is what happens when I drink too much caffeine and then sit down to write a paper (12-17 pages for my race, drugs, and drug policy class, due a week from today).
While attempting to whittle down the Hair soundtrack lyrics I plan to reference in my paper, I was also exchanging facebook comments with a friend who had just watched The History Boys (film) for the third time. She asked me if I had read the play, complete with Alan Bennett's intro, and I proceeded to gush all over her wall along these lines: The History Boys is definitely one of those texts I've examined from a lot of angles (the playscript, the film, on stage in London, in McCosh in my freshman seminar). If I were to slap together my own religious text of choice it would probably be made up of equal parts History Boys quotes and quotes from The West Wing.
And then, I thought, why not?


Excerpts from Nom de Plume's Religious Text of Choice, There's a Way To Be a Person

‎Hector: The best moments in reading are when you come across something — a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things — that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.

Dakin: Nice to be a bit more complicated.
Irwin: Or to be thought so.

Posner: But the pain. The pain.
Scripps: Hector would say it's the only education worth having.
Posner: I just wish there were marks for it.

Headmaster: There is a vacancy in history.
Irwin: (thoughtfully) That's very true.
Headmaster: In the school.
Irwin: Ah.

Mrs. Lintott: A grope is a grope. It is not the Annunciation.

Dakin: Are we scarred for life, do you think?
Scripps: We must hope so.

Rudge: How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another.

Posner: But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained then it can be explained away.

Mrs. Lintott: Durham was very good for history. It's where I had my first pizza. Other things too, of course, but it's the pizza that stands out.

Scripps: You're beginning to write like him.

Scripps: Just because you've got a scholarship doesn't mean you've got to give him unfettered access to your dick.

Irwin: There is no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.


Bruno Gianelli: We all need some therapy, because somebody came along and said, "'Liberal' means soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on Communism, soft on defense, and we're gonna tax you back to the Stone Age because people shouldn't have to go to work if they don't want to!" And instead of saying, "Well, excuse me, you right-wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-choice, pro-gun, Leave It To Beaver trip back to the Fifties...!", we cowered in the corner, and said, "Please. Don't. Hurt. Me." No more.

Josh: When I write my political memoir, this will be the character building funny part.

Bartlet: [to Gov. Ritchie] In the future, if you're wondering, "Crime. Boy, I don't know" is when I decided to kick your ass.

Sam: By the way, my Princeton Tigers could whip your Cal Bears any day of the week.
C.J.: At what?
Sam: Logarithms possibly.

Leo: I mean, there's a way to be a person.