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The Sand Swallows Burst Out Of Their Scupper Holes In The Bluffs And Out Over The Transparent Drown Of The Water, Back Again To The White, To The Brown, To The Black, From Moving To Stock-still Sand Waves And Water-worked Woods And Roots That Hugged And Twisted In The Sun.

-Saul Bellow

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The Sand Swallows Burst

Saul Bellow

...

The Sand Swallows Burst Out Of Their Scupper Holes In The Bluffs And Out Over The Transparent Drown Of The Water, Back Again To The White, To The Brown, To The Black, From Moving To Stock-still Sand Waves And Water-worked Woods And Roots That Hugged And Twisted In The Sun.

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

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

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.

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?

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Live Or Die But Don't Poison Everything.

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

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

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Funny Valentines Day

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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?

How Should I Know Why! I Didn't Invent Human Beings, Iggy.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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?

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 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.

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

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 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.

I Labor, I Spend, I Strive, I Design, I Love, I Cling, I Uphold, I Give Way, I Envy, I Long, I Scorn, I Die, I Hide, I Want. Faster, Much Faster Than Any Man Could Make The Tally.

No Realistic, Sane Person Goes Around Chicago Without Protection.

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

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

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

Death Deserves Dignity.

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

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.

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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.

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...is The Carbon Molecule Lined With Thought?

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

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

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

I Am A Phoenix Who Runs After Arsonists.

I Am More Stupid About Some Things Than Others; Not Equally Stupid In All Directions; I Am Not A Well-rounded Person.

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

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A Plan Relieves You Of The Torment Of Choice.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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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

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.

Strict Seriousness Was Far More Dangerous Than Any Joke.

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

Anxiety Destroys Scale, And Suffering Makes Us Lose Perspective.

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There Is Only One Way To Defeat The Enemy, And That Is To Write As Well As One Can. The Best Argument Is An Undeniably Good Book.

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

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

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.

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

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.

...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.

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.

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.

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

Unexpected Intrusions Of Beauty. This Is What Life Is.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

A Novel Is Balanced Between A Few True Impressions And The Multitude Of False Ones That Make Up Most Of What We Call Life.

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

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

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.'

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.

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

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.

Is Our Species Crazy? Plenty Of Evidence.

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

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.

A Man May Say, "from Now On I'm Going To Speak The Truth." But The Truth Hears Him And Runs Away And Hides Before He's Even Done Speaking.

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.

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

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

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

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

There Is Simply Too Much To Think About.

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 Thought-murder A Day Keeps The Psychiatrist Away.

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.

I Am An American – Chicago Born.

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

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

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

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

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

The Hour That Burst The Spirit's Sleep.

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

It Is A Joy To Be Choked With Thought.

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.

In Expressing Love We Belong Among The Undeveloped Countries.

Expressing Love

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.

Do We Always, Always To The Point Of Misery, Do A Thing?

It Seems Hard For The American People To Believe That Anything Could Be More Exciting Than The Times Themselves. What We Read Daily And View On The Tv Has Thrust Imagined Forms Into The Shadow. We Are Staggeringly Rich In Facts, In Things, And Perhaps, Like The Nouveau Riche Of Other Ages, We Want Our Wealth Faithfully Reproduced By The Artist.

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

A Writer Is A Reader Moved To Emulation.

"what Do Women Want?" "they Eat Green Salad And Drink Human Blood."

In The History Of The World Many Souls Have Been, Are, And Will Be, And With A Little Reflection This Is Marvelous And Not Depressing. Many Jerks Are Made Gloomy About It, For They Think Quantity Buries Them Alive. That's Just Crazy. Numbers Are Very Dangerous, But The Main Thing About Them Is That They Humble Your Pride. And That's Good.

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

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.

Alternatives, And Particularly Desirable Alternatives, Grow Only On Imaginary Trees.

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

Practical Things

Only Self-hatred Could Lead Him To Ruin Himself Because His Heart Was "broken.

You Have One Of Two Choices. Either You Can Panic And Start Making Frantic Attempts To Reform Under The Glare Of These Awful Critical Eyes, Or You Can Just Say, "the Hell With You! I Know What I'm Doing. If You Don't Yet, It's Because You Haven't Given Me An Attentive Reading.

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

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

Ninety Per Cent Of Life Is A Nightmare, Do You Think I Am Going To Get It Rounded Up To Hundred Per Cent?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Our Society, Like Decadent Rome, Has Turned Into An Amusement Society, With Writers Chief Among The Court Jesters

Well, Everybody Has A History.

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.

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

Guys Like You Make Life Easy For Some Women.

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.

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.

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

We Are All Such Accidents. We Do Not Make Up History And Culture. We Simply Appear, Not By Our Own Choice. We Make What We Can Of Our Condition With The Means Available. We Must Accept The Mixture As We Find It - The Impurity Of It, The Tragedy Of It, The Hope Of It.

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

Conquered People Tend To Be Witty.

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

The Sand Swallows Burst Out Of Their Scupper Holes In The Bluffs And Out Over The Transparent Drown Of The Water, Back Again To The White, To The Brown, To The Black, From Moving To Stock-still Sand Waves And Water-worked Woods And Roots That Hugged And Twisted In The Sun.

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

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

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.

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.

Love Is The Most Potent Cosmetic.

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

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.

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

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

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

Some People, If They Didn't Make It Hard For Themselves, Might Fall Asleep.

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

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

... A Fellow Can't Predict What He Will Pick Up In The Form Of Influence.

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

I’ve Had All The Monstrosity I Want.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Socrates Said The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living. But The Over-examined Life Makes You Wish You Were Dead. Given The Alternative, I'd Rather Be Living.

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.

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)

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