For more than 20 years, I've kept a journal, and the endpapers of those notebooks are covered with quotes. This server is the electronic version of those endpapers -- literally. The first 40 or so quotes in the database came directly from the books.

While I don't necessarly agree wholeheartedly with every quote in the server, I see truth in every one of them. I'd never be as cruel as some of these quotes are, and neither would I be as mystically philosophical as others. But as a whole, the collection is pretty representative.

By opening up the quote server to contributions from the outside, I'm basically allowing others to write in my electronic notebook. So I'm pretty picky about what gets included. If I don't like the tone of the quote, or what it says, I won't use it. I'm unlikely to use quotes from people quoting themselves. I'm also wary of "anonymous" quotes.

Some of the best quotes in the server have been contributed by others, and I rarely stop in to see new contributions without noticing one that makes me laugh. If I'm particularly tickled, I might drop you an email to thank you, but if not, come back in a week or so and you might see your quote.

And if you happen to notice a misquote, or a quote attributed to the wrong person, or if you know who said a supposedly "anonymous" bon mot, please let me know.

Finally, please do not ask me for a list of all the quotes in the server. Did you break open your Magic Eight Ball when you were a kid and stain the carpet with that blue liquid? Serendipity is part of the point, and I very deliberately built no bulk-export method into the quote database interface. The only way to get them out is one by one.

Thanks and enjoy.

The quote server was written in 1994 as my first CGI script (or set of them, more accurately). It was written in Perl 4 on an HP/UX machine that a colleague of mine had won by dropping his business card in a fishbowl at a trade show. (This never happens to me!) It has since been completely rewritten in Perl 5 using a module of my own devising. In 2004 I wrapped the original Perl script in PHP.