What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he´s staring out the window.

Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive women. There, that´s it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took *thousands* of words to say it.

Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It´s about these two brothers who kill their father. Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It´s impossible to tell because what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk as much as the Karamazovs did, I don´t see how they found time to become a
major world power.

I´m told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise the question of whether there is a God. So why didn´t he just come right out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me."

Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words:
* "Moby Dick" -- Don´t mess around with large whales because they symbolize nature and will kill you.
* "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.

-- Dave Barry

To be or not to be.
               -- Shakespeare
To do is to be.
               -- Nietzsche
To be is to do.
               -- Sartre
Do be do be do.
               -- Sinatra

It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
-- Mark Twain

A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm)
       -- by Charles Dickens

       A lawyer who looks like a French Nobleman is executed in his place.

The Metamorphosis LITE(tm)
       -- by Franz Kafka

       A man turns into a bug and his family gets annoyed.

Lord of the Rings LITE(tm)
       -- by J. R. R. Tolkien

       Some guys take a long vacation to throw a ring into a volcano.

Hamlet LITE(tm)
       -- by Wm. Shakespeare

       A college student on vacation with family problems, a screwy
       girl-friend and a mother who won´t act her age.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

-- Shakespeare, "The Tempest"

The Swiss have an interesting army. Five hundred years without a war. Pretty impressive.  Also pretty lucky for them. Ever see that little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews. Bottle openers. ´Come on, buddy, let´s go. You get past me, the guy in back of me, he´s got a spoon. Back off. I´ve got the toe clippers right here.´
--Jerry Seinfeld

You´re not my type.  For that matter, you´re not even my species!!!

Gone With The Wind LITE(tm)
       -- by Margaret Mitchell

       A woman only likes men she can´t have and the South gets trashed.

Gift of the Magi LITE(tm)
       -- by O. Henry

       A husband and wife forget to register their gift preferences.

The Old Man and the Sea LITE(tm)
       -- by Ernest Hemingway

       An old man goes fishing, but doesn´t have much luck

Sorry to break into what seems like your personal thread, but I have to mention Crime and Passion too....... 670 pages if you read the notes, or how about The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing, a mere 576 pages of shear drivel, so here is my synopsis of the two:

Crime and Passion - You can appear to be a mad man but if you own up to a crime you will go to jail

The Golden Notebook - Coloured notebooks make life so much more organised or do they?

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.
-- Mark Twain

Q:  Why is Poland just like the United States?
A:   In the United States you can´t buy anything for zlotys and in Poland you can´t either, while in the U.S. you can get whatever you want for dollars, just as you can in Poland.

-- being told in Poland, 1987

For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel.  And if one can neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one?
-- Virginia Woolf, "To the Lighthouse"

 People tend to complicate their lives if their lives were not complicated enough-Carlos Luiz Zafon"the shade of the wind"

 special interest in my country..result of geography studying or international news of flood?pagli,I really appreciate an effort but

1.Why the Us is not like Poland should have been the question

2.You spoke to a wrong Pole and 1987 is a bit obsolete time,don´t you think

3.small correction!we do not sell ourselves for dollars and even for zlotys or other currency..you should take some classes on Polish pride

4.you do not know Poles at all,just wondering if you know Turks)

ahh

concentrate on dutch..janisardis will give you some classes-he seems to have much time)))

i am flying away to the caribbeans

kib

gocmen kus

Oh Birdy, please don´t prove to the evil foreigners that we don´t have any sense of humour when it comes to ourselves

What G quoted is an old Polish joke, I´ve heard it about 1,000 times and it´s still funny to me. It is also true. Polish currency couldn´t get you what (illegal) dollars could Even if all you wanted was a pair of jeans

Birdy represents an average Pole

"I wonder", he said to himself, "what´s in a book while it´s closed. Oh, I know it´s full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there´s a whole story with people I don´t know yet and all kinds of adventures and battles."

-- Bastian B. Bux

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Case of Identity"