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The Divine Was Beyond Description, Beyond Knowing, Beyond Comprehension. To Say That The Divine Was Creation Divided By Destruction Was As Close As One Could Come To Definition. But The Puny Of Soul, The Dull Of Wit, Weren't Content With That. They Wanted To Hang A Face On The Divine. They Went So Far As To Attribute Petty Human Emotions - Anger, Jealousy, Etc - To It, Not Stopping To Realize That If God Were A Being, Even A Supreme Being, Our Prayers Would Have Bored Him To Death Long Ago.

-Tom Robbins

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The Divine Was Beyond

Tom Robbins

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The Divine Was Beyond Description, Beyond Knowing, Beyond Comprehension. To Say That The Divine Was Creation Divided By Destruction Was As Close As One Could Come To Definition. But The Puny Of Soul, The Dull Of Wit, Weren't Content With That. They Wanted To Hang A Face On The Divine. They Went So Far As To Attribute Petty Human Emotions - Anger, Jealousy, Etc - To It, Not Stopping To Realize That If God Were A Being, Even A Supreme Being, Our Prayers Would Have Bored Him To Death Long Ago.

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A Hamburger Is Warm And Fragrant And Juicy. A Hamburger Is Soft And Nonthreatening. It Personifies The Great Mother Herself Who Has Nourished Us From The Beginning. A Hamburger Is An Icon Of Layered Circles, The Circle Being At Once The Most Spiritual And The Most Sensual Of Shapes. A Hamburger Is Companionable And Faintly Erotic. The Nipple Of The Goddess, The Bountiful Belly-ball Of Eve. You Are What You Think You Eat.

Admittedly, Having A Bit Of Disposable Cash In The Bank Can Give You A Sense Of Buddhistic Calm, And Despite The Fallacy Involved, That's Probably Preferable To The Bonafide Adventure Of Robbing A Bank. A Better Alternative, However, Is To Learn To Be At Peace Even When Common Sense (a Highly Overrated Virtue) Would Lead You To Believe That Someone In Your Situation Ought To Feel Threatened And Insecure.

If You're Honest, You Sooner Or Later Have To Confront Your Values. Then You're Forced To Separate What Is Right From What Is Merely Legal. This Puts You Metaphysically On The Run. America Is Full Of Metaphysical Outlaws.

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I'm An Outlaw, Not A Philosopher, But I Know This Much: There's Meaning In Everything, All Things Are Connected, And A Good Champagne Is A Drink.' Bernard Began To Sing Again. Timidly, Leigh-cheri Joined In. Between Verses, They Opened Another Bottle. The Popping Of Its Cork Echoed Throughout The Great Stone Chamber. Of The Three Billion People On Earth, Only Bernard And Leigh-cheri Heard The Popping Of The Cork And Its Echoes. Only Bernard And Leigh-cheri Passed Out Under The Tablecloth.

Actually, There Are Countless Ways To Live Upon This Tremorous Sphere In Mirth And Good Health, And Probably Only One Way - The Industrial, Urbanized, Herding Way - To Live Here Stupidly, And Man Has Hit Upon That One Way.

Any Half-awake Materialist Well Knows - That Which You Hold Holds You.

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People Tend The Take Everything Too Seriously. Especially Themselves. Yep. And That's Probably What Makes 'em Scared And Hurt So Much Of The Time. Life Is Too Serious To Take That Seriously.

The Ultimate End Of Any Ideology Is Totalitarianism.

According To Hindu Cosmology, We're In The Kali Yuga, A Dark Period When The Cow Of History Is Balanced Precariously On One Leg, Soon To Topple. Then There Are Our New-age Friends Who Believe That This December We're In For A Global Cage-rattling Which, Once The Dust Has Settled, Will Usher In A Great Spiritual Awakening. Most Of This Apocalyptic Noise Appears To Be Just Wishful Thinking On The Part Of People Who Find Life Too Messy And Uncertain For Comfort, Let Alone For Serenity And Mirth.

My Personal Motto Has Always Been: Joy In Spite Of Everything. Not Just [mindless] Joy, But Joy In Spite Of Everything. Recognizing The Inequities And The Suffering And The Corruption And All That But Refusing To Let It Rain On My Parade. And I Advocate This To Other People.

My Comic Sense, Although Deliberately Americanized, Is, In Its Intent, Much Closer Related To The Crazy Wisdom Of Zen Monks And The Goofy Genius Of Taoist Masters Than It Is To, Say, The Satirical Gibes On Saturday Night Live. It Has Both A Literary And A Metaphysical Function.

Of The Seven Deadly Sins, Lust Is Definitely The Pick Of The Litter.

In Technological Development, In Production Of Material Goods And Creature Comforts, We've Challenged The Very Gods, But Psychologically, Emotionally, We're Scarcely More Than Chimpanzees With Bulldozers, Baboons With Big Bombs.

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Somewhere In The Archives Of Crudest Instinct Is Recorded The Truth That It Is Better To Be Endangered And Free Than Captive And Comfortable.

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Life Is Like A Stew, You Have To Stir It Frequently, Or All The Scum Rises To The Top.

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There Are Only Two Mantras, Yum And Yuck, Mine Is Yum.

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You Knows Dat In New Orleans Is Not Morning 'til Dee Sun Come Up.

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You're Better Equipped For This World Than I Am," She Said. "i'm Always Trying To Change The World. You Know How To Live In It.

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Christianity... Is An Eastern Religion.

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You Are What You Think You Eat.

My Life Is Not Merely A Public Phenomenon, It Is A Solitary Adventure As Well.

If Kissing Is Man's Greatest Invention, Then Fermentation And Patriarchy Compete With The Domestication Of Animals For The Distinction Of Being Man's Worst Folly, And No Doubt The Three Combined Long Ago, The One Growing Out Of The Others, To Foster Civilization And Lead Western Humanity To Its Present State Of Decline.

Meet Me In Cognito, Baby. In Cognito, We'll Have Nothing To Hide.

There Are People In This World Who Can Wear Whale Masks And People Who Cannot, And The Wise Know To Which Group They Belong.

Sometimes One Gets The Feeling That Life Still Thinks It's Living In Paris In The '30s.

Madame Lily Devalier Always Asked "where Are You?" In A Way That Insinuated That There Were Only Two Places On Earth One Could Be: New Orleans And Somewhere Ridiculous.

When Life Demands More Of People Than They Demand Of Life - As Is Ordinarily The Case - What Results Is A Resentment Of Life Almost As Deep-seated As The Fear Of Death

I Would Only Read The Novels That People Classify As 'beach Books' If I Were Being Held Prisoner And The Only Alternative Was The 'book Of Mormon.'

As Expected, You Get His Machine. Someday, Even The "call Of Nature" Will Be Answered By A Machine.

The Female Characters In My Books Tend To Be Independent, Frisky, Spunky, Witty, Emotionally Strong, Erotically Daring, Spiritually Oriented And Intellectually Generous; In Short, The Kind Of Women I Admire In Real Life.

To The Extent That This World Surrenders Its Richness And Diversity, It Surrenders Its Poetry; To The Extent That It Relinquishes Its Capacity To Surprise, It Relinquishes Its Music; To The Extent That It Loses Its Ability To Tolerate Ridiculous And Even Dangerous Exceptions, It Loses Its Grace.

The Moon Invented Natural Rhythm. Civilization Uninvented It.

Life Is Too Small A Container For Certain Individuals. Some Of Them, Such As Alobar, Huff And Puff And Try To Expand The Container. Others, Such As Kudra, Seek To Pry The Lid Off And Hop Out.

Hold On To Your Divine Blush, Your Innate Rosy Magic, Or End Up Brown. Once You're Brown, You'll Find Out You're Blue. As Blue As Indigo. And You Know What That Means. Indigo. Indigoing. Indigone.

Most Really Good Fiction Is Compelled Into Being. It Comes From A Kind Of Uncalculated Innocence. You Need Not Have Your Ending In Mind Before You Commence. Indeed, You Need Not Be Certain Of Exactly What's Going To Transpire On Page 2. If You Know The Whole Story In Advance, Your Novel Is Probably Dead Before You Begin It. Give It Some Room To Breathe, To Change Direction, To Surprise You. Writing A Novel Is Not So Much A Project As A Journey, A Voyage, An Adventure.

There Is A Similarity Between Juggling And Composing On The Typewriter. The Trick Is, When You Spill Something, Make It Look Like A Part Of The Act.

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This May Be Said For The Last Quarter Of The Twentieth Century: The Truism That If We Want A Better World We Will Have To Be Better People Came To Be Acknowledge, If Not Thoroughly Understood, By A Significantly Large Minority.

Switters Was Actually Quite Fond Of Seattle's Weather, And Not Merely Because Of It's Ambivalence. He Liked It's Subtle, Muted Qualities And The Landscape That Those Qualities Encouraged If Not Engendered: Vistas That Seemed To Have Been Sketched With A Sumi Brush Dipped In Quicksilver And Green Tea. It Was Fresh, It Was Clean, It Was Gently Primal, And Mystically Suggestive.

Magic Things Are Fond Of Deceptions.

There Is Only One Serious Question. And That Is: Who Knows How To Make Love Stay? Answer Me That And I Will Tell You Whether Or Not To Kill Yourself.

Reality Whistles A Different Tune Underwater.

Minds Were Made For Blowing.

It Is As If The Soul Of The Continent Is Weeping. Why Does It Weep? It Weeps For The Bones Of The Buffalo. It Weeps For Magic That Has Been Forgotten. It Weeps For The Decline Of Poets.it Weepsfor The Black People Who Think Like White People.it Weepsfor The Indians Who Think Like Settlers.it Weepsfor The Children Who Think Like Adults.it Weepsfor The Free Who Think Like Prisoners.most Of All, It Weepsfor The Cowgirls Who Think Like Cowboys.

Most Novelists Write About Twisted Lives.

I'm Probably More Interested In Sentences Than Anything Else In Life.

Slavic Peoples Get Their Physical Characteristics From Potatoes, Their Smoldering Inquietude From Radishes, Their Seriousness From Beets.

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When We Accept Bad Art Because It's Good Politics, We're Killing The Swan To Feed The Chickens.

Each Time We Exhale, The World Ends; When We Inhale, There Can Be, If We Allow It, Rebirth And Spiritual Renewal. It All Transpires Inside Of Us. In Our Consciousness, In Our Hearts. All The Time.

Nobody Quite Knew What To Make Of The Moon Any More.

It's Hard To Say Who's A Greater Threat To The World, An Ambitious Ceo With A Big Ad Budget Or A Crafty Cleric With An Obsolete Bible Verse.

Being Able To Create Your Own Work, Being Able To Indulge Your Own Fantasies Is So Much Better Than Journalism, So Much More Fulfilling Than Journalism, To Me, That As Long As I Can Continue To Write Fiction, I Shall.

In Fiction, When You Paint Yourself Into A Corner, You Can Write A Pair Of Suction Cups Onto The Bottoms Of Your Shoes And Walk Up The Wall And Out The Skylight And See The Sun Breaking Through The Clouds. In Nonfiction, You Don't Have That Luxury.

There's Birth, There's Death, And In Between There's Maintenance.

The Japanese Have Become So Smitten With The Western Condiment - Its Texture As Silky As A Kimono, Its Tang As Understated As The Tang Of Zen - That Today They Have A Word For Mayonnaise Junkie: Mayora.

What Mattered To Abu Was The Music Of The Sentence. 'a Shadow Does Not Belong To The Object That Casts It.' To Abu, It Was A Little Poem. And In General, It Was The Poetics, The Music Of Things That Tossed His Confetti.

Some Praise Me, Some Blame Me. I Go The Other Way. Sometimes Those Things That Attract The Most Attention To Us Are The Things Which Afford Us The Greatest Privacy

Self-esteem Is For Sissies. Accept That You're A Pimple And Try To Keep A Lively Sense Of Humor About It. That Way Lies Grace - And Maybe Even Glory.

You Know What I Mean? Real And Unreal, Beautiful And Strange, Like A Dream. It Got Me High As A Kite, But It Didn’t Last Long Enough. It Ended Too Soon And Left Nothing Behind.” That’s How It Is With Dreams,” Said Priscilla. “they’re The Perfect Crime.

Human Folly Does Not Impede The Turning Of The Stars.

People Aren't Trees, So It Is False When They Speak Of Roots.

Love Makes The World Go 'round, It's True, But Lust Stops The World In Its Tracks; Love Renders Bearable The Passage Of Time, Lust Causes Time To Stand Still, Lust Kills Time, Which Is Not To Say That It Wastes It Or Whiles It Aimlessly Away But Rather That It Annihilates It, Cancels It, Extirpates It From Continuum; Preventing, While Lasts, Any Lapse Into The Tense And Shabby Woes Of Temporal Society, Lust Is The Thousand-pound Odometer Needle On The Dashboard Of The Absolute.

If We're Ever Going To Get The World Back On A Natural Footing, Back In Tune With Natural Rhythyms, If We're Going To Nurture The Earth And Protect It And Have Fun With It And Learn From It - Which Is What Mothers Do With Their Children - Then We've Got To Put Technology (an Aggressive Masculine System) In Its Proper Place, Which Is That Of A Tool To Be Used Sparingly, Joyfully, Gently And Only In The Fullest Cooperation With Nature. Nature Must Govern Technology, Not The Other Way Around.

A Thing Is Good Because It Is Good, Not Because It Is Natural. A Thing Is Bad Because It Is Bad, Not Because Its Artificial. It Is Not A Damn Iota Better To Be Bitten By A Rattlesnake Than Shot By A Gun.

Danger Is To Adventure What Garlic Is To Spaghetti Sauce. Without It, You Just End Up With Stewed Tomatoes.

Above All, Have A Good Time. If You Aren’t Enjoying Writing It, You Can Hardly Expect Someone Else To Enjoy Reading It.

The Odor Of Frying Bacon, Sausage Links, And Ham Tiptoed On Little Pig Feet All The Way To The North End Of The Second Floor. Inevitably, The Odor Made Her Simultaneously Ravenous And Nauseated. She Hated The Sensation. It Reminded Her Of Pregnancy. Every Sunday Morning, Leigh-cheri Awoke To A Pan Of Fried Fear.

The Sky Was The Color Of Edgar Allan Poe's Pajamas.

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 Create It So That You Can Look At It And Have It Around, Or Show It To Other People Who Wouldn’t Have Imagined It Because They Perceive Reality In A More Narrow, Predictable Way. And That’s It. That’s All An Artist Does.

The Harsh Truth Is, Most Red-haired Men Look Like Blondes Who've Spoiled From Lack Of Refrigeration. They Look Like Brown-haired Men Who've Been Composted Out Behind The Barn. Yet That Same Pigmentation That On A Man Can Resemble Leaf Mold Or Junkyard Rust, A Woman Wears Like A Tiara Of Rubies.

Of The Seven Dwarfs, The Only One Who Shaved Was Dopey. That Should Tell Us Something About The Wisdom Of Shaving.

Often, Moreover, It Is...that Aspect Of Our Being That Society Finds Eccentric, Ridiculous, Or Disagreeable, That Holds Our Sweet Waters, Our Secret Well Of Happiness, The Key To Our Equanimity In Malevolent Climes.

The Principal Difference Between An Adventurer And A Suicide Is That The Adventurer Leaves Himself A Margin Of Escape (the Narrower The Margin The Greater The Adventure), A Margin Whose Width And Length May Be Determined By Unknown Factors But Whose Navigation Is Determined By The Measure Of The Adventurer's Nerve And Wits. It Is Exhilarating To Live By One's Nerves Or Toward The Summit Of One's Wits.

Jackson Pollock Said Once, "i Don't Really Feel That Many People In This World Are Alive." He Said, "that's Why I Like You, Tom. You're Alive."

Be Your Own Flying Saucer! Rescue Yourself!

Western Civilization Was Declining Too Fast For Comfort, But Too Slowly To Be Very Exciting.

The Enemy Is The Tyranny Of The Dull Mind.

The Most Important Thing In Life Is Style. That Is, The Style Of Ones Existence-the Characteristic Mode Of Ones Actions-is Basically, Ultimately What Matters. For If Man Defines Himself By Doing, Then Style Is Doubly Definitive, Because Style Describes The Doing.

I'll Follow Him To The Ends Of The Earth,' She Sobbed. Yes, Darling. But The Earth Doesn't Have Any Ends. Columbus Fixed That.

Time Passed. Art Came Off The Walls And Became Rituals. Ritual Became Religion. Religion Spawned Science. Science Led To Big Business. And Big Business, If It Continues On Its Present, Mindless Trajectory, Could Land Those Lucky Enough To Survive Its Ultimate Legacy Back Into Caves Again.

I Am Cheerful. I Don't Know If I'm Happy. There Is A Difference, You Know.

Just Because Something Didn't Happen Doesn't Mean It Isn't True.

The Rich Are The Most Discriminated-against Minority In The World. Openly Or Covertly, Everybody Hates The Rich Because, Openly Or Covertly, Everybody Envies The Rich. Me, I Love The Rich. Somebody Has To Love Them. Sure, A Lot O’ Rich People Are Assholes, But Believe Me, A Lot O’ Poor People Are Assholes, Too, And An Asshole With Money Can At Least Pay For His Own Drinks.

What Bothers Most Critics Of My Work Is The Goofiness. One Reviewer Said I Need To Make Up My Mind If Want To Be Funny Or Serious. My Response Is That I Will Make Up My Mind When God Does, Because Life Is A Commingling Of The Sacred And The Profane, Good And Evil. To Try And Separate Them Is Fallacy.

To An Artist A Metaphor Is As Real As A Dollar.

The First Thunderstorm Of The Season Was In The Dressing Room, Donning Its Black Robes And Its Necklace Of Hailstones, Strapping On Its Electrical Sword.

Our Purpose Is To Consciously, Deliberately Evolve Towards A Wiser, More Liberated And Luminous State Of Being.

As Long As A Population Can Be Induced To Believe In A Supernatural Hereafter, It Can Be Oppressed And Controlled. People Will Put Up With All Sorts Of Tyranny, Poverty, And Painful Treatment If They're Convinced That They'll Eventually Escape To Some Resort In The Sky Where Lifeguards Are Superfluous And The Pool Never Closes. Moreover, The Faithful Are Usually Willing To Risk Their Skins In Whatever Military Adventure Their Government May Currently Be Promoting.

Sounds Travel Through Space Long After Their Wave Patterns Have Ceased To Be Detectable By The Human Ear: Some Cut Right Through The Ionosphere And Barrel On Out Into The Cosmic Heartland, While Others Bounce Around, Eventually Being Absorbed Into The Vibratory Fields Of Earthly Barriers, But In Neither Case Does The Energy Succumb; It Goes On Forever - Which Is Why We, Each Of Us, Should Take Pains To Make Sweet Notes.

Much Scientific Truth Proved To Be As Hypothetical As Poetic Allegory. The Relationshiip Of Those Rod-connected Blue And Red Balls To An Actual Atomic Structure Was About The Same As The Relationship Of Christianity To The Fish Or The Lamb.

I Rather Like The Smell Of Absurdity In The Morning.

I Believe In Political Solutions To Political Problems. But Man's Primary Problems Aren't Political; They're Philosophical. Until Humans Can Solve Their Philosophical Problems, They're Condemned To Solve Their Political Problems Over And Over And Over Again. It's A Cruel, Repetitious Bore.

I Do Not Know Why The Dead Do Not Come Back To Life. Perhaps Death Is So Wonderful, In Ways We Cannot Comprehend, That They Prefer It Over And Above Their Friends And Loved Ones, Although I Am Inclined To Doubt That Be The Case.

In The Haunted House Of Life, Art Is The Only Stair That Doesn't Creak.

The Difference Between Love And Logic Is That In The Eyes Of A Lover, A Toad Can Be A Prince, Whereas In The Analysis Of A Logistician, The Lover Would Have To Prove That The Toad Was A Prince, An Enterprise Destined To Dull The Shine Of Many A Passion.

You've Heard Of People Calling In Sick. You May Have Called In Sick A Few Times Yourself. But Have You Ever Thought About Calling In Well

I Journey To The East, Where I Have Been Told, There Are Men Who Have Taught Death Some Manners.

The Brutal Truth Is, We're Scarcely 'educating' Children At All. Even If You Overlook The Guilt, Fear, Bigotry, And Dangerous Anti-intellectual Flapdoodle Being Funneled Into Young Brains By Schools On The Religious Right, What We're Doing Is Training Kids To Be Cogs In The Wheels Of Commerce.

The Function Of The Artist Is To Provide What Life Does Not.

And What Would Our Ideas Of God, Of Religion, Be Like If They Had Come To Us Through The Minds Of Women? Ever Think Of That?

She Needed Help, But God Was In A Meeting Whenever She Rang.

I've Sucked Way Too Much Cement For This Year. Bad Juju Rising Off Them City Sidewalks. I Need To Babble With A Brook Or Two, Inhale Starlight, Make Friends With Some Trees.

Sharks Are The Criminals Of The Sea. Dolphins Are The Outlaws.

But The Center Can Be A Harmful Place For One Who Has Lived So Long On The Edge.... Normality Is The Great Neurosis Of Civilization.

You Know What The Game Of Golf Is, Don't You? It's Basketball For People Who Can't Jump And Chess For People Who Can't Think.

If Complexity Doesn't Beat You, Paradox Will.

Conservatives Understand Halloween, Liberals Only Understand Christmas. If You Want To Control A Population, Don't Give It Social Services, Give It A Scary Adversary.

This Is The Room Where Jezebel Frescoed Her Eyelids With History's Tragic Glitter

I've Always Assumed That Every Time A Child Is Born, The Divine Reenters The World. Okay? That's The Meaning Of The Christmas Story. And Every Time That Child's Purity Is Corrupted By Society, That's The Meaning Of The Crucifixion Story. Your Man Jesus Stands For That Child, That Pure Spirit, And As Its Surrogate, He's Being Born And Put To Death Again And Again, Over And Over, Every Time We Inhale And Exhale, Not Just At The Vernal Equinox And On The Twenty-fifth Of December.

Success Can Eliminate As Many Options As Failure.

Success Failure

Why Procrastinate When You Can Precognitate?

Procrastinating

In East Of Eden, John Steinbeck Wrote That There's Never Been A Great Creative Collaboration. When The Beatles First Burst On The Scene, I Thought They Were Proving Him Wrong. Later, We Learned That Lennon And Mccartney Had Each Composed Their Pop Masterpieces Separately, Individually. So It Goes.

Creative Collaboration

What An Electric Heater Perched Upon The Rim Of The Bathtub Of The World That Dead Jesus Was.

A Mediocre Failure Is As Insufferable As A Mediocre Success. Embrace Failure! Seek It Out. Learn To Love It. That May Be The Only Way Any Of Us Will Ever Be Free.

Still Life With Woodpecker

I Mean That Gods Do Not Limit Men. Men Limit Men.

Summer Had Come To Sit On New York's Face.

Comedy Is Deemed Inferior To Tragedy Primarily Because Of The Social Prevalence Of Narcissistic Pathology. In Other Words People Who Are Too Self Important To Laugh At Their Own Frequently Ridiculous Behavior Have Vested Interest In Gravity Because It Supports Their Illusions Of Grandosity.

We Approach The Divine By Enlarging Our Souls And Lighting Up Our Brains.

And It Rained A Fever. And It Rained A Silence. And It Rained A Sacrifice. And It Rained A Miracle. And It Rained Sorceries And Saturnine Eyes Of The Totem.

Religion Is Nothing But Institutionalized Mysticism. The Catch Is, Mysticism Does Not Lend Itself To Institutionalization. The Moment We Attempt To Organize Mysticism, We Destroy Its Essence. Religion, Then, Is Mysticism In Which The Mystical Has Been Killed. Or, At Least Diminished.

If You Need To Visualize The Soul, Think Of It As A Cross Between A Wolf Howl, A Photon And A Dribble Of Dark Molasses. But What It Really Is, As Near As I Can Tell, Is A Packet Of Information. It's A Program, A Piece Of Hyperspatial Software Designed Explicitly To Interface With The Mystery. Not A Mystery, Mind You - The Mystery. The One That Can Never Be Solved.

People Feel Tremendous Pressure To Settle Down In Some Sort Of Permanent Space And Fill It Up With Stuff, But Deep Inside They Resent Those Structures, And They're Scared To Death Of That Stuff Because They Know It Controls Them And Restricts Their Movements.

People Who Sacrifice Beauty For Efficiency Get What They Deserve. (bernard Mickey Wrangle, P 99)

Still Life With Woodpecker

...language Is Not The Frosting, It's The Cake.

In Seattle, I Soon Found That My Radical Ideas And Aesthetic Explorations - Ideas And Explorations That In Richmond, Virginia, Might Have Gotten Me Stoned To Death With Hush Puppies - Were Not Only Accepted But Occasionally Applauded.

Love Easily Confuses Us Because It Is Always In Flux Between Illusion And Substance, Between Memory And Wish, Between Contentment And Need.

You Don't Have To Be A Genius To Recognize One. If You Did, Einstein Would Never Have Gotten Invited To The White House.

Love Is The Ultimate Outlaw. It Just Won't Adhere To Any Rules. The Most Any Of Us Can Do Is Sign On As Its Accomplice.

For Most People, Self-awareness And Self-pity Blossom Simultaneously In Early Adolescence. It's About That Time That We Start Viewing The World As Something Other Than A Whoop-de-doo Playground, We Start To Experience Personally How Threatening It Can Be, How Cruel And Unjust. At The Very Moment When We Become, For The First Time, Both Introspective And Socially Conscientious, We Receive The Bad News That The World, By And Large, Doesn't Give A Rat's Ass.

There Were No Mail-order Catalogues In 1492. Marco Polo's Journal Was The Wish Book Of Renaissance Europe. Then, Columbus Sailed The Ocean Blue And Landed In Sears' Basement. Despite All The Indians On The Escalator, Columbus' Visit Came To Be Known As A "discovery.

I Believed In Looking At People As Individuals, Not In Groups. I Hated Groups; Still Do. And I Saw Particularly The University, The University Artists Really Acted As A Group. The Others Didn't So Much, But The University People Took Advantage Of That And Behaved Like A Group, Rather Than As Individuals. They Had A Lot Of Power That Way.

Maybe Most People Were Fundamentally Contradictory. The Real People At Any Rate.

His Voice Wore No Pants.

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Mireille Guiliano

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