Posing the question: does the god of love use underarm deodorant, vaginal spray and fluoride toothpaste?
And which brands?
Then he said the truest thing about their relationship. He said, We didn't really fall in love. What we did was collide at the intersection of your life and mine.
Well, sure, you do have to actually meet.
Gods can do anything. They fear nothing: they are gods. There is one rule, one Seal of Solomon that can confound a god, and to which all gods pay service, to the letter: when belief in a god dies, the god dies.
I know that mine did.
Surrounded by madness, surrounded by hunger, surrounded by everything but death, I knew death was our only way out.
It'll either come to this for you or it won't.
Entertain, yes. That goes without saying. But a good writer does that automatically, it's built into the machine. Telling a thumpingly good, mesmerizing story is what one does without question. But beyond that, any writer worth his/her hire knows that all writing, one way or another, is subversive. It is guerrilla warfare against the status quo.
He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.
The void itself will take care of that.
To be or not to be. That's not really a question.
And, from time to time, it's the answer.
It's not where you take things from — it's where you take them to.
I take them here, for example.
Much to the chagrin of the pinheads.
A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.
Ah, the "new wave"!
To be immortal and then die.
Not as easy as it doesn't sound.
Suddenly, I don't know what to say. It happens often to me. I know what I want to say, I think about whether it is what I mean, but when the moment comes to speak, I can't say it.
Nana: The more we talk, the less the words mean.
Nana: Shouldn't love be the only truth?
The Philosopher: For that, love would always have to be true.
Of all the nasty outcomes predicted for women's liberation...none was more alarming than the suggestion that women would eventually become just like men.
Ah, the worst of all possible worlds.
What you don't necessarily realize when you start selling your time by the hour is that what you're really selling is your life.
Of course, that won't make the bills go away.
I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease. Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has already been hit. From which it followed, of course, that one would never ever -- on pain of deletion from dozens of Christmas card lists across the country -- vote Republican.
Or, for that matter, even think about it.
I grew up hearing over and over, to the point of tedium, that "hard work" was the secret of success: "Work hard and you'll get ahead" or "It's hard work that got us where we are." No one ever said that you could work hard - harder even than you ever thought possible - and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt.
And then on top of that be completely expendable.
There is a vast difference between positive thinking and existential courage.
Can it even be measured?
In matters of the heart as well, a certain level of negativity and suspicion is universally recommended. You may try to project a thoroughly positive outlook in order to attract a potential boyfriend, but you are also advised to Google him.
There is nothing more childish than loving those who rule over you.
Let's try to think of something.
So apparently it's respectful to say things like "in memory of the Queen" but it's disrespectful to remember the actual things she did?
Yeah, what about that?
Very funny that people are like, "in Tolkien's legendarium the Elves have various races, such as the Nolder, Vanyar, Teleri, Sindar, Avari, etc. Each have distinct physical appearances, languages, customs, and genealogy. Also they are all English."
Yeah, what about that?
It's funny that it's portrayed as being "edgy" to hate the Queen. My dude, "hating the monarchy" is not exactly a new and exciting idea in 2022, pretty sure people have been doing that for thousands of years at this point.
Anyone here edgier than I am?
Mooooooooommmmm, the communists are being irreverent to the norms of bourgeois society, make them stop!!
Next up: Daaaaaaaaddddddd.
...controversial opinion but fuck the bourgeoisie in particular...
We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?
That tricky enough for you?
What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed up against a wall, everything a huge foreground, of details, close-ups, hairs, the weave of the bedsheet, the molecules of the face. Your own skin like a map, a diagram of futility, crisscrossed with tiny roads that lead nowhere. Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be.
Or something in and around that.
Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn?
Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really.
You know, in a free will world.
Almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it.
Going back to, oh, I don't know, conception?
...morning is the soul's night.
For those who have one especially.
Yes, I'm paranoid — but am I paranoid enough?
Not to worry. I'm paranoid enough for both of us.
Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves.
Especially when the object is Donald Trump.
We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately - the object seemed incidental to this will to give ourselves away, utterly. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it.
Believe it or not--it takes a lot of love to hate you like this.
The thin line between them as it were.
I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant...I AM HAUNTED BY HUMANS.
And them by me.
Well, in the best of all possible worlds anyway.
The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.
Trust me: yours more than mine.
It was a Monday and they walked on a tightrope to the sun.
52 times a year to be exact.
If they killed him tonight, at least he would die alive.
Of course, that is how it usually happens.
Only in today's sick society can a man be persecuted for reading too many books.
Great art is never perfect; perfect art is never great.
In other words, blah, blah, blah.
What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well.
Next up: the essence of posting here.
The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chain saws.
Of course, he's just paraphrasing Joni Mitchell.
If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. Not juniper trees in general but that one particular juniper tree which grows from a ledge of naked sandstone near the old entrance to Arches National Monument.
Would you read it?
Water, water, water... There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount...unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.