All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create.....
Siebel, The Magazine has a man in a suit on the cover. He's not smiling, or frowning. He wears a beard that isn't a beard; it's a quotation from a film nobody can put their finger on. 'Customer satisfaction,' says the brochure. 'Seamless integration....
If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will protect upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually c...
The exciting thing about mathematics and science and music and literature is what they can tell us about the workings of the human mind. For these disciplines are literally models (extensions) of at least certain parts of the mind. Just as the knife ...
My Teacher Sees Right Through Me I didn’t do my homework. My teacher asked me, “Why?” I answered him, “It’s much too hard.” He said, “You didn’t try.” I told him, “My dog ate it.” He said, “You have no dog.” I said, “I wen...
The true elitists in the literary world are the ones who have become annoyed by literary ambition in any form, who have converted the very meaning of ambition so totally that it now registers as an act of disdain, a hostility to the poor common reade...
Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? Bu...
With heart at rest I climbed the citadel's Steep height, and saw the city as from a tower, Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells, Where evil comes up softly like a flower. Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain, Not for vain tears I went up at ...
I dislike interaction. The less I say the better I feel. I was naturally a loner. I didn’t want conversation, or to goanywhere. I didn’t understand other people who wanted to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I was drawn to all the wrong...
Take the matter as you find it ask no questions, utter no remonstrances; it is your best wisdom. You expected bread and you have got a stone: break your teeth on it, and don't shriek because the nerves are martyrised; do not doubt that your mental st...
The young doctor was disappointed: he had never had th eopportunity to study the effects of gold cyanide on a cadaver. Dr. Juvenal Urbino had been surprised that he had not seen him at the Medical School, but he understood in an instant from the youn...
Our categories are important. We cannot organize a social life, a political movement, or our individual identities and desires without them. The fact that categories invariably leak and can never contain all the relevant "existing things" does not re...
Science has never killed or persecuted a single person for doubting or denying its teaching, and most of these teaching have been true; but religion has murdered millions for doubting or denying her dogmas and most of these dogmas have been false. Al...
All this has been happening around them all the days of their lives though they couldn’t see it, then one day, Prayer removes the veil and everything changes. Think of it this way: Picture a man whistling a tune, when out of nowhere, first a harmon...
I who am blind can give one hint to those who see: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to the other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as ...
I’ve heard that lawyers’ children, on seeing their parents in court in the heat of argument, get the wrong idea: they think opposing counsel to be the personal enemies of their parents, they suffer agonies, and are surprised to see them often go ...
...and yet the idea is hard to accept, it's so hard to succeed in making something happen, even what's been decided on and planned out, not even the will of a god seems forceful enough to manage it, if our own will is made in its semblance. It may be...
Burke's admonition--"The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations"--never seems to have occurred to Hayek. The Arnoldian ideal of the disint...
I'm not saying that suffering is our fault. I believe we suffer because sin has taken hold of the world. And with sin comes selfishness and heartlessness and wickedness. But I also think there will be a day of reckoning, Nick, when God lays out all w...
She puts her hands on either side of my face, and the room falls away. I have never gotten so lost in a kiss before. And then, the space between us explodes. My heart keeps missing beats and my hands cannot bring her close enough to me. I taste her a...