She blinded him with grammar

I was sad to read about Roger Ebert losing his battle with cancer. That man was such an inspiration! Even when he lost his physical ability to speak, he had an acid tongue.

Who else could write a book with this title?

Check out 13 of his most hilarious comments here; this is my personal favorite:

On Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: "If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination."

Would you have had the personal strength to keep this up if you had to be fed via IV tube four times a day? I am humbled.

What was really interesting to me is that one of things that attracted him to his wife, Chaz, an attorney who was his partner for 26 years, was that her love letters to him were not only poetic, but that "As a newspaperman, I observed she never, ever, made a copy-reading error."

If this is what it takes to have a lasting partnership (writes the journalism major), I am golden. 

But seriously, I remember my friend Lynn posting this great quote from an interview with Ebert in 2010 - she posted it again today and I thought it was worth sharing.


"I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do.  To make others less happy is a crime.  To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts.  We must try to contribute joy to the world.  That is true to matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances.  We must try.  I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out." 

Amen to that.