Famous Quotes Ipsum

Imagination is more powerful than knowledge. imagining something is better than remembering something. the individual is born of nature, but the artist is born of that individual, yearning to transcend the merely "natural" and to make complete that which, existentially, is forever incomplete, unrealized. we must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee. words mean more than what is set down on paper - it takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning. metaphors are not to be trifled with. a single metaphor can give birth to love. i have not lived as a woman. i've lived as a man. i've just done what i damn well wanted to and i've made enough money to support myself and i ain't afraid of being alone. never joke about a woman's hair, clothes or menstrual cycle. page one. sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. if you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning ''good morning'' at total strangers. there is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear. the fear of death follows from the fear of life. a man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. be still and know that i am god. the difference between the possible and the impossible lies in a person's determination. never judge a book by its movie. it's still snowing. and freezing. however, we haven't had an earthquake lately. walter turned on the radio: electric violins wailing, twisted romance, the four-square beat of heart break. trite suffering, but suffering nonetheless. the entertainment business. what voyeurs we all have become. a pain stabbed my heart as it did every time i saw a girl i loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world. are there not chapters in everybody's life that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of history?.

The artist's life is in his work, and this is the place to observe him. thou shalt not be a victim. thou shalt not be a perpetrator. above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. action is eloquence. curiosity is braver than rage. exploration is a nobler calling than combat. the unknown beckons to us, singing its siren song and making our hearts pound with fear and desire. once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. so much of what i see reminds me of something i read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? the one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy. words do not express thoughts very well. they always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. perhaps you too have met in the cause of your life women of that sort, who are self-luminous and shine in the dark, who are phosphorescent, like touchwood. do you understand, / child, how the moon, the tide / is in our own image? the change of life comes when you meet yourself at a crossroads and you decide whether to be honest or not before you die. in our struggle for freedom, truth is the only weapon we possess. if you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people. it's at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull. i don't know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind. i wish i believed, as j. b. priestley did, that consciousness continues after disembodiment or death, not forever, but for a long while. three score years and ten is such a stingy ration of time, when there is so much time around. perhaps that's why some of us are insomniacs; night is so precious that it would be pusillanimous to sleep all through it! a "bad night" is not always a bad thing. sex. in america it's an obsession; in other parts of the world, a fact. do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain. when you get into a tight place and it seems you can't go on, hold on, for that's just the place and the time that the tide will turn. watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever. religion is a daughter of hope and fear, explaining to ignorance the nature of the unknowable. why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong? you teach what you have to learn. it is not necessary to have achieved perfection to speak of perfection. it is not necessary to have achieved mastery to speak of mastery. it is not necessary to have achieved the highest level of evolution to speak of the highest level of evolution. seek only to be genuine. strive to be sincere. perfection is terrible; it cannot have children. perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. the flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all. one of the earliest lessons i learned as a child was that if you looked away from something, it might not be there when you looked back. my piano is a universe. those eighty-eight keys arrange the seven planets in musical scales, an aural cosmos. are there not chapters in everybody's life that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of history? i'm at peace with the world. i'm completely serene. i've discovered my purpose in life. i know why i was put here and why everything exists... i am here so everybody can do what i want. once everybody accepts it, they'll be serene too..

Nothing strengthens the judgement and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. do not follow where the path may lead. go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. power consists.... in deciding which stories will be told. mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves--that's the truth. we have two or three great moving experiences in our lives--experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before. i have not lived as a woman. i've lived as a man. i've just done what i damn well wanted to and i've made enough money to support myself and i ain't afraid of being alone. the change of life comes when you meet yourself at a crossroads and you decide whether to be honest or not before you die. a single sun shines here and in the land where i was born, though we call it by different names. in the realm of idea, the great principles behind the forms that we see are the same. a day is a miniature eternity. the feeling of sunday is the same everywhere: heavy, melancholy, standing still. like when they say, 'as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end.' the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n. the robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief. have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause in a roomful of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're all alone in the whole house? each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful, if you listen carefully. why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility - these are the very foundations of any real civilization, no longer the prerogatives, the preserves of any one church, but belonging to everyone, every child in every home, every school. maybe that's what bravery is, a stronger fear of not being brave. the cure for everything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea. it is not upon you alone the dark patches fall. i discovered i scream the same way whether i'm about to be devoured by a great white or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot. the happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions. give me a museum and i'll fill it. if i had a formula for bypassing trouble, i wouldn't pass it around. wouldn't be doing anybody a favor. trouble creates a capacity to handle it. i don't say embrace trouble. that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. but i do say, meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it. if we could stay that way forever; if we could stay filled to the brim and floating toward the darkness, never suffocating or dying - . watching stars without you, my soul cries.