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In An Age Of Madness, To Expect To Be Untouched By Madness Is A Form Of Madness. But The Pursuit Of Sanity Can Be A Form Of Madness, Too

-Saul Bellow

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In An Age Of

Saul Bellow

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In An Age Of Madness, To Expect To Be Untouched By Madness Is A Form Of Madness. But The Pursuit Of Sanity Can Be A Form Of Madness, Too

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Boredom Is The Conviction That You Can't Change ... The Shriek Of Unused Capacities.

If I'm Out Of My Mind, It's All Right With Me, Thought Moses Herzog.

In The Greatest Confusion There Is Still An Open Channel To The Soul. It May Be Difficult To Find Because By Midlife It Is Overgrown, And Some Of The Wildest Thickets That Surround It Grow Out Of What We Describe As Our Education. But The Channel Is Always There, And It Is Our Business To Keep It Open, To Have Access To The Deepest Part Of Ourselves.

I've Never Turned Over A Fig Leaf Yet That Didn't Have A Price Tag On The Other Side.

But She's A Nut, And Nuts Win.

It Seems, After All That There Are No Nonpeculiar People.

It Is Wrong To Turn A Man (a Subject) Into A Thing (an Object). By Means Of Spiritual Dialogue, The I-it Relationship Becomes An I-thou Relationship. God Comes And Goes In Man's Soul. And Men Come And Go In Each Other's Souls. Sometimes They Come And Go In Each Other's Beds, Too.

I Don’t Actually Take Much Stock In The Collapsing Culture Bit. I’m Beginning To See It Instead As The Conduct Of Life Without Input From Your Soul.

What Homo Sapien Imagines, He May Slowly Convert Himself To.

It's Not Up To Me ... To Make The World Consistent.

She's Very Pretty But She's Honey From The Icebox, If You Know What I Mean. Cold Sweets Won't Spread.

You Have, Like The External World, Your Own Phenomena Inside.

I Think That New York Is Not The Cultural Centre Of America, But The Business And Administrative Centre Of American Culture.

Those Who Have A Why To Live For Can Bear Almost Any How. The Necessary Premise Is That A Person Is Somehow More Than His Or Her "characteristics," All The Emotions, Strivings, Tastes, And Constructions Which It Pleases Us To Call "my Life." We Have Grounds To Hope That A Life Is Something More Than A Cloud Of Particles, Mere Facticity. Go Through What Is Comprehensible And You Conclude That Only The Incomprehensible Gives Any Light.

I Have Begun In Old Age To Understand...that We Seldom If Ever Realize How Generous We Are To Ourselves, And Just How Stingy With Others.

Also, He Was Smoking A Cigar, And When A Man Is Smoking A Cigar, Wearing A Hat, He Has An Advantage; It Is Harder To Find Out How He Feels.

How Could I Be Anything But A Dissenter? Who Wants The Opinion Of A Group?

I Am A True Adorer Of Life, And If I Can't Reach As High As The Face Of It, I Plant My Kiss Somewhere Lower Down. Those Who Understand Will Require No Further Explanation.

I Want To Tell You, Don't Marry Suffering. Some People Do. They Get Married To It, And Sleep And Eat Together, Just As Husband And Wife. If They Go With Joy They Think It's Adultery.

I Am Something Of A Crank About Sleep, For If I Get Seven And A Quarter Hours Instead Of Eight I Feel Afflicted And Drag Myself Around, Although There's Nothing Really Wrong With Me. It's Just Another Idea. That's How It Is With My Ideas; They Seem To Get Strong While I Weaken.

But A Man's Character Is His Fate... And In The End There Isn't Any Way To Disguise The Nature Of The Knocks By Acoustical Work On The Door Or Gloving The Knuckles.

I'm Glad I Haven't Lived In Vain.

Towards The End Of Your Life You Have Something Like A Pain Schedule To Fill Out - A Long Schedule Like A Federal Document, Only It's Your Pain Schedule. Endless Categories. First, Physical Causes - Like Arthritis, Gallstones, Menstrual Cramps. New Category, Injured Vanity, Betrayal, Swindle, Injustice. But The Hardest Items Of All Have To Do With Love. The Question Then Is: So Why Does Everybody Persist? If Love Cuts Them Up So Much.

The Life Of Every Citizen Is Becoming A Business. This, It Seems To Me, Is One Of The Worst Interpretations Of The Meaning Of Human Life History Has Ever Seen. Man's Life Is Not A Business.

You Never Have To Change Anything You Got Up In The Middle Of The Night To Write.

In An Age Of Madness, To Expect To Be Untouched By Madness Is A Form Of Madness. But The Pursuit Of Sanity Can Be A Form Of Madness, Too

California Is Like An Artificial Limb The Rest Of The Country Doesn't Really Need. You Can Quote Me On That.

Death Is The Dark Backing A Mirror Needs If We Are To See Anything

You Can Spend The Entire Second Half Of Your Life Recovering From The Mistakes Of The First Half.

Human Character Is Smaller Now, People Don't Have Durable Passions; They've Replaced Passions With Excitement.

Live Or Die But Don't Poison Everything.

There Is Much To Be Said For Exotic Marriages. If Your Husband Is A Bore, It Takes Years Longer To Discover.

You're All Alone When You're A Writer. Sometimes You Just Feel You Need A Humanity Bath. Even A Ride On The Subway Will Do That. But It's Much More Interesting To Talk About Books. After All, That's What Life Used To Be For Writers: They Talk Books, Politics, History, America. Nothing Has Replaced That.

... Unless You Made Your Life A Turning Point, There Was No Reason For Existing.

There Are Times When The Most Practical Thing Is To Lie Down.

Practical Things

In Expressing Love We Belong Among The Undeveloped Countries.

Expressing Love

An Exchange Occurs Between Man And Woman. Love And Thought Complete Each Other In The Human Pair, And Something Like An Exchange Of Souls Takes Place, According To The Divine Plan.

A Writer Is In The Broadest Sense A Spokesman Of His Community. Through Him That Community Comes To Know Its Heart. Without Such Knowledge, How Long Can It Survive?

A Writer Is A Reader Moved To Emulation.

A Novel Is Balanced Between A Few True Impressions And The Multitude Of False Ones That Make Up Most Of What We Call Life. It Tells Us That For Every Human Being There Is A Diversity Of Existences, That The Single Existence Is Itself An Illusion In Part, That These Many Existences Signify Something, Tend To Something, Fulfill Something; It Promises Us Meaning, Harmony, And Even Justice.

But There Are Things You Can't Consult Anybody About.

Well, Everybody Has A History.

Conquered People Tend To Be Witty.

You Have To Fight For Your Life. That's The Chief Condition On Which You Hold It.

...is The Carbon Molecule Lined With Thought?

A Man Is Only As Good As What He Loves.

Funny Valentines Day

The Secret Motive Of The Absent-minded Is To Be Innocent While Guilty. Absent-mindedness Is Spurious Innocence.

Open Discussion Of Many Major Public Questions Has For Some Time Now Been Taboo. We Can't Open Our Mouths Without Being Denounced As Racists, Misogynists, Supremacists, Imperialists Or Fascists. As For The Media, They Stand Ready To Trash Anyone So Designated.

Bringing People Into The Here-and-now. The Real Universe. That's The Present Moment. The Past Is No Good To Us. The Future Is Full Of Anxiety. Only The Present Is Real--the Here-and-now. Seize The Day.

I Would Like To Explain That I Consider Prayer Above All An Act Of Gratitude For Existence.

There Are Evils That Have The Ability To Survive Identification And Go On For Ever... Money, For Instance, Or War.

We Take Foreigners To Be Incomplete Americans -- Convinced That We Must Help And Hasten Their Evolution.

Art -- The Fresh Feeling, New Harmony, The Transforming Magic Which By Means Of Myth Brings Back The Scattered Distracted Soul From Its Modern Chaos -- Art, Not Politics, Is The Remedy.

The First Undressing Of Two Lovers Is A Most Special Event.

The Main Reason For Rewriting Is Not To Achieve A Smooth Surface, But To Discover The Inner Truth Of Your Characters.

I Mean You Have Been Disappointed In Love, But Don't You Know How Many Things There Are To Be Disappointed In Besides Love? You Are Lucky To Be Still Disappointed In Love. Later It May Be Even More Terrible.

Love Is The Most Potent Cosmetic.

It Wasn't That He Was Specially Ungenerous But That He Put Things Off To Give His Generosity A Longer And More Significant Route.

Americans Must Be The Most Sententious People In History. Far Too Busy To Be Religious, They Have Always Felt That They Sorely Needed Guidance.

The Soul Has To Find And Hold Its Ground Against Hostile Forces, Sometimes Embodied In Ideas Which Frequently Deny Its Very Existence, And Which Indeed Often Seem To Be Trying To Annul It Altogether.

And What About All The Good I Have In My Heart - Does It Mean Anything?

If I Had A Child Of School Age, I Would Send Him To One Of The Waldorf Schools.

The Challenge Of Modern Freedom, Or The Combination Of Isolation And Freedom Which Confronts You, Is To Make Yourself Up. The Danger Is That You May Emerge From The Process As A Not-entirely-human Creature. (referenced In How To Lose Friends And Alienate People By Toby Young)

Death Is The Black Backing On The Mirror That Allows Us To See Anything At All.

A Millennial Belief In A Holy God May Have The Effect Of Deepening The Soul, But It Is Also Obviously Archaic, And Modern Influences Would Presently Bring Me Up To Date And Reveal How Antiquated My Origins Were. To Turn Away From Those Origins, However, Has Always Seemed To Me An Utter Impossibility. It Would Be A Treason To My First Consciousness To Un-jew Myself.

People Can Lose Their Lives In Libraries. They Ought To Be Warned.

Hapiness Can Only Be Found If You Can Free Yourself Of All Other Distractions.

O Lord! He Concluded, Forgive All These Trespasses. Lead Me Not Into Penn Station.

When The Striving Ceases, There Is Life Waiting As A Gift.

Losing A Parent Is Something Like Driving Through A Plate-glass Window. You Didn't Know It Was There Until It Shattered, And Then For Years To Come You're Picking Up The Pieces -- Down To The Last Glassy Splinter.

Certain Blood Will Be Given For Half Certain Reasons, As In All Wars.

The Modern Reader (or Viewer, Or Listener: Let's Include Everybody) Is Perilously Overloaded. His Attention Is, To Use The Latest Lingo,'targeted' By Powerful Forces? Our Consciousness Is A Staging Area, A Field Of Operations For All Kinds Of Enterprises, Which Make Free Use Of It.

When I Didn't Argue He Was Satisfied He Had Persuaded Me, And Was Not The First To Make That Mistake.

De Tocqueville Considered The Impulse Toward Well-being As One Of The Strongest Impulses Of A Democratic Society. He Can't Be Blamed For Underestimating The Destructive Powers Generated By This Same Impulse.

In Politics Continental Europe Was Infantile - Horrifying. What America Lacked, For All Its Political Stability, Was The Capacity To Enjoy Intellectual Pleasures As Though They Were Sensual Pleasures. This Is What Europe Offered, Or Was Said To Offer.

Fidelity Is For Phonographs

Each Man Has His Own Batch Of Poems.

For God's Sake,' The Dog Is Saying, 'open The Universe A Little More!

It Is Sometimes Necessary To Repeat What All Know. All Mapmakers Should Place The Mississippi In The Same Location And Avoid Originality.

I've Discovered That Rejections Are Not Altogether A Bad Thing. They Teach A Writer To Rely On His Own Judgment And To Say In His Heart Of Hearts, 'to Hell With You.'

Unless You're Completely Exploded, There's Always Something To Be Grateful For.

Showing Gratitude

Anxiety Destroys Scale, And Suffering Makes Us Lose Perspective.

...chaos Doesn't Run The Whole Show.

Unexpected Intrusions Of Beauty. This Is What Life Is.

And I'm Convinced That Knowing The Names Of Things Braces People Up.

I Must Play The Instrument I've Got.

I Seem To Have The Blind Self-acceptance Of The Eccentric Who Can't Conceive That His Eccentricities Are Not Clearly Understood.

The Spirit Knows That Its Growth Is The Real Aim Of Existence.

It Would Not Be Practical For Her To Hate Herself. Luckily, God Sends A Substitute, A Husband.

The Terms Which, In His Inmost Heart, Each Man Knows. As I Know Mine. As All Know. For That Is The Truth Of It — That We All Know, God, That We Know, That We Know, We Know, We Know.

My Face Too Blind, My Mind Too Limited, My Instincts Too Narrow. But This Intensity, Doesn't It Mean Anything?

The Only Truly Intersting Side Of The Matter Was The Intimate Design Of The Injury, The Fact That It Was So Penetrating, Custom-made Exactly To Your Measure. It's Fascinating That Hatred Should Be So Personal As To Be Almost Loving. The Knife And The Wound Aching For Each Other.

With A Novelist, Like A Surgeon, You Have To Get A Feeling That You've Fallen Into Good Hands - Someone From Whom You Can Accept The Anesthetic With Confidence.

It's Hard For Writers To Get On With Their Work If They Are Convinced That They Owe A Concrete Debt To Experience And Cannot Allow Themselves The Privilege Of Ranging Freely Through Social Classes And Professional Specialties. A Certain Pride In Their Own Experience, Perhaps A Sense Of The Property Rights Of Others In Their Experience, Holds Them Back.

I’ve Had All The Monstrosity I Want.

No Realistic, Sane Person Goes Around Chicago Without Protection.

I'm Afraid There's Nothing We Can Do About The Journalists; We Can Only Hope That They Will Die Off As The Deerflies Do Towards The End Of August.

I Don't Like To Write From A Flat, Cold Position. You Must Like What You're Doing Very Much Or Like The People -- Either Like Them Or Hate Them. You Can't Be Indifferent.

Everyone Tries To Create A World He Can Live In, And What He Can't Use He Often Can't See. But The Real World Is Already Created, And If Your Fabrication Doesn't Correspond, Then Even If You Feel Noble And Insist On There Being Something Better Than What People Call Reality, That Better Something Needn't Try To Exceed What, In Its Actuality, Since We Know It So Little, May Be Very Surprising. If A Happy State Of Things, Surprising; If Miserable Or Tragic, No Worse Than What We Invent.

I Have, Perhaps, A Slave-like Constitution Which Is Too Easily Restrained By Bonds; It Then Becomes Rebellious And Bursts Out In A Comic Revolution.

To Tell The Truth I Never Had It So Good. But I Lacked The Strength Of Character To Bear Such Joy.

All A Writer Has To Do To Get A Woman Is To Say He's A Writer. It's An Aphrodisiac.

Here We Write Well When We Expose Frauds And Hypocrites. We Are Great At Counting Warts And Blemishes And Weighting Feet Of Clay. In Expressing Love, We Belong Among The Underdeveloped Countries.

Boredom Is An Instrument Of Social Control. Power Is The Power To Impose Boredom, To Command Stasis, To Combine This Stasis With Anguish. The Real Tedium, Deep Tedium, Is Seasoned With Terror And With Death.

I Am Moneys Medium. It Passes Through Me- Taxes, Insurance, Mortgage, Child Support, Rent, Legal Fees. All This Dignified Blundering Costs Plenty.

At Moments I Dislike Having A Face, A Nose, Lips, Because He Has Them.

People Don't Realize How Much They Are In The Grip Of Ideas. We Live Among Ideas Much More Than We Live In Nature.

We Are Funny Creatures. We Don't See The Stars As They Are, So Why Do We Love Them? They Are Not Small Gold Objects, But Endless Fire.

Everybody Knows There Is No Fineness Or Accuracy Of Suppression; If You Hold Down One Thing, You Hold Down The Adjoining.

I Pretended Not To Understand. One Of Life's Hardest Jobs, To Make A Quick Understanding Slow. I Think I Succeeded, Thought Herzog.

The Late Philosopher Morris R. Cohen Of Ccny Was Asked By A Student In The Metaphysics Course, Professor Cohen, How Do I Know That I Exist? The Keen Old Prof Replied, And Who Is Asking?

...i Am Much Better Now At Ambiguities.

When We Ask For Advice, We Are Usually Looking For An Accomplice.

The Body, She Says, Is Subject To The Force Of Gravity. But The Soul Is Ruled By Levity, Pure.

A Man Should Be Able To Hear, And To Bear, The Worst That Could Be Said Of Him.

The Dream Of Man's Heart ... Is That Life May Complete In Significant Pattern.

Fun Comes Hard - Like, Alas, Its Prarens, Pleasure And Happiness, Whom We Have To Pursue.

...america Didn't Have To Fight Scarcity And We All Felt Guilty Before People Who Still Had To Struggle For Bread And Freedom In The Old Way ... We Weren't Starving, We Weren't Bugged By The Police, Locked Up In Madhouses For Our Ideas, Arrested, Deported, Slave Laborers Sent To Die In Concentration Camps. We Were Spared The Holocausts And Nights Of Terror. With Our Advantages We Should Be Formulating The New Basic Questions For Mankind. But Instead We Sleep. Just Sleep And Sleep, And Eat And Play And Fuss And Sleep Again.

All Human Accomplishment Has The Same Origin, Identically. Imagination Is A Force Of Nature. Is This Not Enough To Make A Person Full Of Ecstasy? Imagination, Imagination, Imagination.

Forces Of Nature

... An Era Of Turmoil And Ideological Confusion, The Principal Phenomenon Of The Present Age.

The Best Argument Is An Undeniably Good Book.

One Must Bear In Mind The Odd Angle Or Slant That The Rays Of Love Have To Take In Order To Reach A Heart Like Mine.

For The First Time In History, The Human Species As A Whole Has Gone Into Politics. Everyone Is In The Act, And There Is No Telling What May Come Of It.

Death Deserves Dignity.

I Feel That Art Has Something To Do With The Achievement Of Stillness In The Midst Of Chaos.

Humankind Struggles With Collective Powers For Its Freedom, The Individual Struggles With Dehumanization For The Possession Of His Soul.

The Hour That Burst The Spirit's Sleep.

Retirement Is An Illusion. Not A Reward But A Mantrap. The Bankrupt Underside Of Success. A Shortcut To Death. Golf Courses Are Too Much Like Cemeteries.

Erotic Practices Have Become Diversified. Sex Used To Be A Single-crop Farming, Like Cotton Or Wheat; Now People Raise All Kinds Of Things.

The Flesh Would Shrink And Go, The Blood Would Dry, But No One Believes In His Mind Of Minds Or Heart Of Hearts That The Pictures Do Stop.

I Immersed Myself In The Periodic Table Gladly And Gratefully. There Is Nothing Superfluous Here, Everything This Book Contains Is Essential. It Is Wonderful Pure, And Beautifully Translated...i Was Deeply Impressed.

I Feel That Art Has Something To Do With The Achievement Of Stillness In The Midst Of Chaos. A Stillness Which Characterizes Prayer, Too, And The Eye Of The Storm. I Think That Art Has Something To Do With An Arrest Of Attention In The Midst Of Distraction.

Everybody Needs His Memories. They Keep The Wolf Of Insignificance From The Door.

Facts Always Are Sensational.

There's A Kind Of Emptiness At The Center Of Life ... Nothing To Form Your Life On, Or By.

Language Is A Spiritual Mansion In Which You Live And Nobody Has The Right To Evict You.

A Great Deal Of Intelligence Can Be Invested In Ignorance When The Need For Illusion Is Deep.

One Way Or Another The No Doubt Mad Idea Entered My Mind That My Own Actions Had Historic Importance And This Fantasy (?) Made It Appear That People Who Harmed Me Were Interfering With An Important Experiment.

It's No Disgrace To Be A Private, You Know. Socrates Was A Plain Foot Soldier, A Hoplite.

Is Love Supposed To Ruin You? It Seems To Me You Shouldn't Destroy Yourself Out Of Life For Purposes Of Love--or What Good Is It?

I Am Deeply Moved When I Write. I Get Turned On By It. I've Never Used Any Drugs For Stimulation. I Don't Use Words Loosely. When I'm Working And The Right Word Comes, There Is An Answering Resonance Within Me. There Is Also A Hardness Of Intention That Goes With It. There Is No Idleness In It.

It Is A Joy To Be Choked With Thought.

Art Attempts To Find In The Universe, In Matter As Well As In The Facts Of Life, What Is Fundamental, Enduring, Essential.

A Good Novel Is Worth More Then The Best Scientific Study.

If Women Are Expected To Do The Same Work As Men, We Must Teach Them The Same Things.

I Am An American, Chicago Born – Chicago, That Somber City – And Go At Things As I Have Taught Myself, Free-style, And Will Make The Record In My Own Way: First To Knock, First Admitted; Sometimes An Innocent Knock, Sometimes A Not So Innocent. But A Man's Character Is His Fate, Says Heraclitus, And In The End There Isn't Any Way To Disguise The Nature Of The Knocks By Acoustical Work On The Door Or Gloving The Knuckles.

Associate With The Noblest People You Can Find; Read The Best Books; Live With The Mighty; But Learn To Be Happy Alone.

He Believed That He Must, That He Could And Would Recover The Good Things, The Happy Things, The Easy Tranquil Things Of Life. He Had Made Mistakes, But He Could Overlook These. He Had Been A Fool, But That Could Be Forgiven. The Time Wasted--must Be Relinquished. What Else Could One Do About It? Things Were Too Complex, But They Might Be Reduced To Simplicity Again. Recovery Was Possible.

I Am A Phoenix Who Runs After Arsonists.

In Here, The Human Bosom -- Mine, Yours, Everybody's -- There Isn't Just One Soul. There's A Lot Of Souls. But There Are Two Main Ones, The Real Soul And A Pretender Soul. Now! Every Man Realizes That He Has To Love Something Or Somebody. He Feels That He Must Go Outward. 'if Thou Canst Not Love, What Art Thou?' Are You With Me?

Whoever Wants To Reach A Distant Goal Must Take Small Steps.

Let The Enemies Of Life Step Down.

A Fool Can Throw A Stone In A Pond That 100 Wise Men Can Not Get Out.

The Physical Body Is An Agent Of The Spirit And Its Mirror. It Is An Engine And A Reflection Of The Spirit. It Is The Spirit's Ingenious Memorandum To Itself And The Spirit Sees Itself In My Body, Just As I See My Own Face In A Looking Glass. My Nerves Reflect This. The Earth Is Literally A Mirror Of Thoughts. Objects Themselves Are Embodied Thoughts. Death Is The Dark Backing That A Mirror Needs If We Are To See Anything.

Unfortunately For The Betterment Of Mankind It Is Not Always The Fair-minded Who Are In The Right.

Strict Seriousness Was Far More Dangerous Than Any Joke.

Psychoanalysis Pretends To Investigate The Unconscious. The Unconscious By Definition Is What You Are Not Conscious Of. But The Analysts Already Know What's In It - They Should, Because They Put It All In Beforehand.

I Blame Myself For Not Often Enough Seeing The Extraordinary In The Ordinary. Somewhere In His Journals, Dostoyevky Remarks That A Writer Can Begin Anywhere, At The Most Commonplace Thing, Scratch Around In It Long Enough, Pry And Dig Away Long Enough, And Lo!, Soon He Will Hit Upon The Marvelous.

Readiness To Answer All Questions Is The Infallible Sign Of Stupidity.

In An Age Of Enormities, The Emotions Are Naturally Weakened. We Are Continually Called Upon To Have Feelings - About Genocide, For Instance, Or About Famine Or The Blowing Up Of Passenger Planes - And We Are All Aware That We Are Incapable Of Reacting Appropriately. A Guilty Consciousness Of Emotional Inadequacy Or Impotence Makes People Doubt Their Own Human Weight.

In Every Community There Is A Class Of People Profoundly Dangerous To The Rest. I Don't Mean The Criminals. For Them We Have Punitive Sanctions. I Mean The Leaders. Invariably The Most Dangerous People Seek The Power. While In The Parlors Of Indignation The Right-thinking Citizen Brings His Heart To A Boil. (p. 51)

Great Pressure Is Brought To Bear To Make Us Undervalue Ourselves. On The Other Hand, Civilization Teaches That Each Of Us Is An Inestimable Prize. There Are, Then, These Two Preparations: One For Life And The Other For Death. Therefore We Value And Are Ashamed To Value Ourselves.

Brother Raises A Hand Against Brother And Son Against Father (how Terrible!) And The Father Also Against Son. And Moreover It Is A Continuity-matter, For If The Father Did Not Strike The Son, They Would Not Be Alike. It Is Done To Perpetuate Similarity. Oh, Henderson, Man Cannot Keep Still Under The Blows.... A Hit B? B Hit C?--we Have Not Enough Alphabet To Cover The Condition. A Brave Man Will Try To Make The Evil Stop With Him. He Shall Keep The Blow. No Man Shall Get It From Him, And That Is A Sublime Ambition.

One Of The Booby Traps Of Freedom - Which Is Bordered On All Sides By Isolation - Is That We Think So Well Of Ourselves. I Now See That I Have Helped Myself To The Best Cuts At Life's Banquet.

I Am An American – Chicago Born.

I Think That Art Has Something To Do With An Arrest Of Attention In The Midst Of Distraction.

Art Is Order, Made Out Of The Chaos Of Life.

The Best And Purest Human Beings, From The Beginning Of Time, Have Understood That Life Is Sacred.

It's Usually The Selfish People Who Are Loved The Most. They Do What You Deny Yourself, And You Love Them For It. You Give Them Your Heart.

Because I Have Become Such A Solitary, And Not In The Aristotelian Sense: Not A Beast, Not A God. Rather, A Loner Troubled By Longings, Incapable Of Finding A Suitable Language And Despairing At The Impossibility Of Composing Messages In A Playable Key--as If I No Longer Understood The Codes Used By The Estimable People Who Wanted To Hear From Me And Would Have So Much To Reply If Only The Impediments Were Taken Away.

Any Artist Should Be Grateful For A Naive Grace Which Puts Him Beyond The Need To Reason Elaborately.

There Is Simply Too Much To Think About.

Can We Find Nothing Good To Say About Tv? Well, Yes, It Brings Scattered Solitaries Into A Sort Of Communion. Tv Allows Your Isolated American To Think That He Participates In The Life Of The Entire Country. It Does Not Actually Place Him In A Community, But His Heart Is Warmed With The Suggestion (on The Whole False) That There Is A Community Somewhere In The Vicinity And That His Atomized Consciousness Will Be Drawn Back Toward The Whole.

We Are Always Looking For The Book It Is Necessary To Read Next.

A Man Must Have Limits And Cannot Give In To The Wild Desires To Be Everything And Everyone And Everything To Everyone.

The More Realistic You Are The More You Threaten The Grounds Of Your Own Art.

Take Our Politicians: They're A Bunch Of Yo-yos. The Presidency Is Now A Cross Between A Popularity Contest And A High School Debate, With An Encyclopedia Of Cliches.

The Only Real Distinction At This Dangerous Moment In Human History And Cosmic Development Has Nothing To Do With Medals And Ribbons. Not To Fall Asleep Is Distinguished. Everything Else Is Mere Popcorn.

I Don't Know Exactly How It's Done. I Let It Alone A Good Deal.

All Human Accomplishment Has This Same Origin, Identically. Imagination Is A Force Of Nature. Is This Not Enough To Make A Person Full Of Ecstasy? Imagination, Imagination, Imagination! It Converts To Actual. It Sustains, It Alters, It Redeems!

The Stillness In Art Characterizes Prayer, And The Eye Of The Storm.

The Ocean Was Waiting With Grand And Bitter Provocations, As If It Invited You To Think How Deep It Was, How Much Colder Than Your Blood Or Saltier, Or To Outguess It, To Tell Which Were Its Feints Or Passes And Which Its Real Intentions, Meaning Business.

A Plan Relieves You Of The Torment Of Choice.

But Privately When Things Got Very Bad I Often Looked Into Books To See Whether I Could Find Some Helpful Words, And One Day I Read, "the Forgiveness Of Sins Is Perpetual And Righteousness First Is Not Required." This Impressed Me So Deeply That I Went Around Saying It To Myself. But Then I Forgot Which Book It Was.

From Euclid To Newton There Were Straight Lines. The Modern Age Analyzes The Wavers.

I See That I've Become A Really Bad Correspondent. It's Not That I Don't Think Of You. You Come Into My Thoughts Often. But When You Do It Appears To Me That I Owe You A Particularly Grand Letter. And So You End In The "warehouse Of Good Intentions": "can't Do It Now." "then Put It On Hold." This Is One's Strategy For Coping With Old Age, And With Death--because One Can't Die With So Many Obligations In Storage. Our Clever Species, So Fertile And Resourceful In Denying Its Weaknesses.

And I Said To Myself That Unless You Conceive Death To Be A Violent Guerrilla And Kidnaper Who Snatches Those You Love, And If You Are Not Cowardly And Cannot Submit To Such Terrorism As Civilized People Now Do In Every Department Of Life, You Must Pursue And Inquire And Explore Every Possibility And Seek Everywhere And Try Everything.

The Writer Cannot Make The Seas Of Distraction Stand Still, But He [or She] Can At Times Come Between The Madly Distracted And The Distractions.

We Mustn't Forget How Quickly The Visions Of Genius Become The Canned Goods Of Intellectuals.

Excuse Me ... But I Reject Your Definitions Of Me.

Goodness Is Achieved Not In A Vacuum, But In The Company Of Other Men, Attended By Love.

Is Our Species Crazy? Plenty Of Evidence.

Myself Is Thus And So, And Will Continue Thus And So. And Why Fight It? My Balance Comes From Instability.

With One Long Breath, Caught And Held In His Chest, He Fought His Sadness Over His Solitary Life. Don't Cry, You Idiot! Live Or Die, But Don't Poison Everything.

In Los Angeles All The Loose Objects In The Country Were Collected, As If America Had Been Tilted And Everything That Wasn't Tightly Screwed Down Had Slid Into Southern California.

(socrates) Said There Were Only Two Possibilities. Either The Soul Is Immortal Or, After Death, Things Would Be Again As Blank As They Were Before We Were Born.

There Is An Immense, Painful Longing For A Broader, More Flexible, Fuller, More Coherent, More Comprehensive Account Of What We Human Beings Are, Who We Are And What This Life Is For.

As For Types Like My Own, Obscurely Motivated By The Conviction That Our Existence Was Worthless If We Didn't Make A Turning Point Of It, We Were Assigned To The Humanities, To Poetry, Philosophy, Painting - The Nursery Games Of Humankind, Which Had To Be Left Behind When The Age Of Science Began. The Humanities Would Be Called Upon To Choose A Wallpaper For The Crypt, As The End Drew Near.

A Human Soul Devoid Of Longing Was A Soul Deformed, Deprived Of Its Highest Good, Sick Unto Death.

There Was A Disturbance In My Heart, A Voice That Spoke There And Said, I Want, I Want, I Want! It Happened Every Afternoon, And When I Tried To Suppress It It Got Even Stronger.

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