ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author provides to take up two flagrant cases of tag-lines which have been cited innumerable times in the world press, famous lines from Bert Brecht and Karl Kraus, illustrates the “art of misquotation.”Fine writers have a penchant for fine phrases. Occasionally when the inspired formula turns out to be at once thoughtful and memorable it runs into one peculiarly troublesome fate—the felicitous lines tend to be misquoted. Burlesquing quotations can come to a sticky end, for the parodic spirit is infectious and even hack journalists can take their mocking revenge on professionals of satiric dialogue should they reveal themselves to be vulnerable by getting an accent wrong or slipping up on the lilt of a drawl. The choice of what the interviewee said for quotation is necessarily selective; and between the conversation and the day of publication fallen on a shadow of distortion.
