Famous Quotes Ipsum

The artist's life is in his work, and this is the place to observe him. clothes make the man. naked people have little or no influence on society. the way i see it, the men that i'm with, whoever they are, it's like look, you have to accept that i like ice cream, and i know it shows up on my hips but if you can't accept that, then leave. go away. toodles. it is non-negotiable. 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. 'when i was a kid,' said irie softly, ringing the bell for their stop, 'i used to think they were little alibis. bus tickets. i mean, look: they've got the time. the date. the place. and if i was up in court, and i had to defend myself, and prove i wasn't where they said i was, doing what they said i did, when they said i did it, i'd pull out one of those.' be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. when you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. by all accounts, sex is a personally encoded communique, continually reinvented. in languages that form the word 'compassion' not from the root 'suffering' but from the root 'feeling', the word is used in approximately the same way, but to contend that it designates a bad or inferior sentiment is difficult. the secret strength of its etymology floods the word with another light and gives it a broader meaning: to have compassion (co-feeling) means not only to be able to live with others' misfortune but also able to feel with him any emotion - joy, anxiety, happiness, pain. this kind of compassion therefore signifies the maximal capacity of affective imaginations, the art of emotional telepathy. in the hierarchy of sentiments, then, it is supreme. when i dare to be powerful / to use my strength / in the service of my vision / then it becomes / less and less important / whether i am afraid. when the morning's freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles give under the strain, the climb seems endless, and suddenly nothing will go quite as you wish - it is then that you must not hesitate. i liked how sterile my room was, cleansed of all the emotions that have ever been felt there, all the fights and lovemaking and plain rest of weary travelers wiped clean, leaving no mark on the perfectly made bed. i pray because i can't help myself. i pray because i'm helpless. i pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. it doesn't change god, it changes me. oh help! i'd better go back. oh bother! i shall have to go on. i can't do either! oh help and bother! keep your face to the sunshine, and you cannot see the shadows. be still and know that i am god. there is something very wonderful in music. words are wonderful enough; but music is even more wonderful. it speaks not to our thoughts as words do; it speaks straight to our hearts and spirits, to the very core and root of our souls. music soothes us, stirs us up; it puts noble feelings in us; it melts us to tears; we know not how - it is a language by itself, just as perfect, in its way, as speech, as words. i am young. i am younger each year at the first snow. when i see it, suddenly, in the air, all little and white and moving; then i am in love again and very young and i believe everything. christ is in the manger and santa in heaven..

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. everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. words mean more than what is set down on paper - it takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning. talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience. if a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as michelangelo painted, or beethoven composed music, or shakespeare composed poetry. he should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well. every now and then go away, even briefly, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer; since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power. you're never fully dressed without a smile. 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. people living deeply have no fear of death. they are composed like music. guided by his sense of beauty, and individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence (beethoven's music, death under a train) into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life. anna could have chosen another way to take her life. but the motif of death and the railway station, unforgettably bound to the birth of love, enticed her in her hour of despair with its dark beauty. without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress. the body of b. franklin, / printer, / like the cover of an old book, / its contents torn out / and / stripped of its lettering and gilding, / lies here / food for worms, / but the work shall not be lost, / for it will, as he believed / appear once more / in a new and more elegant edition / revised and corrected / by the author. for tomorrow may rain, so i'll follow the sun. what i couldn't say was that the real reason was so much deeper and harder and that we spend our lives deceiving ourselves of these real reasons, perhaps because when they are clear they are too painful. why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong? fame lost its appeal for me when i went into a public restroom and an autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door. we shall not cease from exploration - and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started - and know the place for the first time. 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. they took all the trees / and put them in a tree museum / and they charged all the people / a dollar and a half just to see 'em / don't it always seem to go / that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone / they paved paradise / and put up a parking lot i think of love, and you, and my heart grows full and warm, and my breath stands still..

Tolerating blind obedience in the name of patriotism or religion ultimately takes our lives. for as long as i can remember, i had been transparent to myself, unselfconscious, learning, doing, most of every day. now i was in my own way; i myself was a dark object i could not ignore. i couldn't remember how to forget myself. i didn't want to think about myself, to reckon myself in, to deal with myself every livelong minute on top of everything else - but swerve as i might, i couldn't avoid it. i was a boulder blocking my own path. i was a dog barking between my own ears, a barking dog who wouldn't hush. so this was adolescence..... it's strange that words are so inadequate. yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words. hell has no fury like women's fury. it takes two to speak truth - one to speak and another to hear. but surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to speed the myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect. and as archie knows, it's not like that. it's never been like that. she thought now of the pink anemones waving in that water. like herself, when he'd first spied on her with her sensitive, fleshy tentacles of thought waving all around her, until he'd touched and made her draw up quickly into a stony fist. but he knew just how to touch her, speak to her, breathe on her, to draw her out again. physical pleasure was such a convincing illusion, and sex, the ultimate charade of safety. there has never been an answer. there never will be an answer. that's the answer. it isn't for the moment you are struck that you need courage, but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security. when i have a terrible need of - shall i say the word? - religion, then i go out and paint the stars. what i couldn't say was that the real reason was so much deeper and harder and that we spend our lives deceiving ourselves of these real reasons, perhaps because when they are clear they are too painful. we don't see things as they are - we see them as we are. to love another person is to see the face of god. he felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not now where he ended and she began. doubt thou the stars are fine / doubt that the sun doth move / doubt truth be a liar / but never doubt i love. to live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else..