Before everyone weighs in with the classics - I find there are turns of phrase that pop up in song lyrics of various genres that are striking in their blunt directness or in their casual indirectness. These are usually more clever than deep - even, as one of my English profs once put it, "devoid of intellectual content" - but catchy and memorable. For instance, the Beach Boys: "I'm getting bugged driving up and down the same ol' strip,/I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip" - you could write a (short?) essay on the attitude, sub-culture, social implications, and imagery evoked by those two simple lines.