I’ve long tended to regard the interruption of complacency as a kind of public service.
In addition, Dr. Dannyboy has suggested a fifth element: positive thinking. Pointing out that their breathing, bathing, dining and screwing brought Alobar and Kudra much physical pleasure, and that an...
How can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointment can bring?
Wit and playfulness represent a desperately serious transcendence of evil. Humor is both a form of wisdom and a means of survival.
…the extent to which a society focuses on the needs of its lowest common denominator is the extent to which that society’ll be mired in mediocrity. Whereas, if we would aim the bulk of our support at...
You mean you would have me blow up something just because I didn’t approve of it? What do you think I am, a vandal? A fascist? A fucking critic?
We approach the divine by enlarging our souls and lighting up our brains.
There are no such things as synonyms! he practically shouted.
The word desire suggests that there is something we do not have. If we have everything already, then there can be no desire, for there is nothing left to want. I think that what the Buddha may have be...
The trouble with you is that the only way you can communicate is through art. You’ve never learned to communicate your feelings to a man. You don’t even want to communicate in a relationship. You thin...
The price of self-destiny is never cheap, and in certain situations it is unthinkable.
The party in Alobar’s head, which agitation and anxiety were throwing, now was crashed by a notion: existence can be rearranged.
People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve. (Bernard Mickey Wrangle, p 99)
Look, America is no more a democracy than Russia is a Communist state. The governments of the U.S. and Russia are practically the same. There's only a difference of degree. We both have the same basic...
I love myself, he said. But it’s unrequited.
But, Foley, my lad, it isn't beauty per se that makes wire-walking Zen or makes it art. It's the extremity of the risks that are assumed by each exquisite gesture, each impossible somersault. Here's a...
Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.
Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much comfort, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer.
If there’s a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn’t exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you crea...
As a grandiose self-deception, war is o’ the same magnitude as religion. We embrace war or religion - usually both at the same time - as a means o’ defeatin’ death, but neither o’ them do a blinkin’ t...