Picture Tina Fey, buried up to her waist in snow

Something of this is being heard, I am not merely talking to myself, that is in the wilderness, a thing I could never bear to do – for any length of time. (Pause.) That is what enables me to go on, go on talking that is. (Pause.) Whereas if you were to die – (smile) – to speak in the old style – (smile off) – or go away and leave me, then what would I do, what could I do, all day long, I mean between the bell for waking and the bell for sleep? (Pause.) Simply gaze before me with compressed lips.

–Winnie in Happy Days by Samuel Beckett

Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me - sports... basketball. I use it because you're naïve if you don't see the national full-court press picking away right now: A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket... and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can WIN. And I'm doing that - keeping our eye on the ball that represents sound priorities - smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom! And I know when it"s time to pass the ball - for victory.

-Sara Palin, Resignation Speech

We all get the modernist absurdity we need. This will be a gift which keeps on giving. In keeping with my long held theory that American history is controlled by a cabal of improv actors, I would argue Palin may have created one of their masterworks and may be building an entire persona around retroactive applied parodics.

It's also a bit of these.

LYDIA
Madam, I thought you once----

Mrs. MALAPROP
You thought, miss! I don't know any business you have to think at
all--thought does not become a young woman. But the point we would
request of you is, that you will promise to forget this fellow--to
illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.

LYDIA
Ah, madam! our memories are independent of our wills. It is not so easy
to forget.

Mrs. MALAPROP
But I say it is, miss; there is nothing on earth so easy as to forget,
if a person chooses to set about it. I'm sure I have as much forgot
your poor dear uncle as if he had never existed--and I thought it my
duty so to do; and let me tell you, Lydia, these violent memories don't
become a young woman.

-The Rivals by Richard Sheridan

anyhow its done now once and for all with all the talk of the world about it people make its only the first time after that its just the ordinary do it and think no more about it why cant you kiss a man without going and marrying him first you sometimes love to wildly when you feel that way so nice all over you you cant help yourself I wish some man or other would take me sometime when hes there and kiss me in his arms theres nothing like a kiss long and hot down to your soul almost paralyses you then

-Molly Bloom in Ulysses by James Joyce

Then began the Lord Suckfist in manner as followeth. "My lord, and you my masters, if the iniquity of men were as easily seen in categorical judgment as we can discern flies in a milkpot, the world's four oxen had not been so eaten up with rats, nor had so many ears upon the earth been nibbled away so scurvily...Sometimes, when we think one thing, God does another; and when the sun is wholly set all beasts are in the shade. Let me never be believed again, if I do not gallantly prove it by several people who have seen the light of the day..."

-Gargantua And His Son Pantagruel by Master Francis Rabelais

"Which reminds me --" the White Queen said, looking down and nervously clasping and unclasping her hands, "we had SUCH a thunderstorm last Tuesday -- I mean one of the last set of Tuesdays, you know."

Alice was puzzled. "In OUR country," she remarked, `there"s only one day at a time."

The Red Queen said, "That"s a poor thin way of doing things. Now HERE, we mostly have days and nights two or three at a time, and sometimes in the winter we take as many as five nights together -- for warmth, you know."

"Are five nights warmer than one night, then?" Alice ventured to ask.

"Five times as warm, of course."

"But they should be five times as COLD, by the same rule -- "

"Just so!" cried the Red Queen. "Five times as warm, AND five times as cold -- just as I"m five times as rich as you are, AND five times as clever!"

Alice sighted and gave it up. "It"s exactly like a riddle with no answer!" she thought...

...Here the White Queen began again. "It was SUCH a thunderstorm, you can"t think!" (She NEVER could you know," said the Red Queen.) "And part of the roof came off, and ever so much thunder got in -- and it went rolling round the room in great lumps -- and knocking over the tables and things -- till I was so frightened, I couldn"t remember my own name!"

-Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

That's not it. That's not it at all. You always have a tendency to add. But one must be able to subtract too. It's not enough to integrate, you must also disintegrate. That's the way life is. That's philosophy. That's science. That's progress, civilization.

-The Professor in The Lesson by Eugène Ionesco