System Drains

Famous quotes containing the words system and/or drains:

    The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along the primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one’s way to where the country is.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    I change, and so do women too;
    But I reflect—which women seldom do.
    Tobacco is a filthy weed,
    That from the devil doth proceed;
    That drains your purse, that burns your clothes,
    That makes a chimney of your nose.
    —Anonymous. “Written on a Looking Glass,” from Geoffrey Grigson’s Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs, Faber & Faber (1977)