Mailer famously labeled writing the spooky art. He was right. There's a lot of frontal lobe blather, a lot of pencil-sharpening and knuckle-cracking and drafting and chat, but the big decisions are made in the locked subconscious, decisions not just ...
Lysistrata: Oh, Calonicé, my heart is on fire; I blush for our sex. Men will have it we are tricky and sly... Calonicé: And they are quite right, upon my word! Lysistrata: Yet, look you, when the women are summoned to meet for a matter of the last ...
Michael [Hutchence] is hands down one of the greatest frontmen in music. The style, the voice—all of it. Any way that I was ever influenced by him really comes down to small, pale imitations compared to the real thing. There is a fearlessness about...
So yes, black mages often can be evil. But black as a color is not inherently evil. Being influenced by black’s philosophies does not necessarily mean that one will commit an evil act. That being the case, we cannot say that black represent...
No mathematician should ever allow him to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. … Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who ha...
There is one more thing," said Mr. Peabody. "Now you must go and pick up all the feathers." ... "I don't think it's possible to pick up all the feathers," Tommy replied. "It would be just as impossible to undo the damage that you have done by spreadi...
And then a memory from Avalon surfaced in her mind, something she had not thought of for a decade; one of the Druids, giving instruction in the secret wisdom to the young priestesses, had said, If you would have the message of the Gods to direct your...
Does a leaf, when it falls from the tree in winter, feel defeated by the cold? The tree says to the leaf: "That’s the cycle of life. You may think you’re going to die, but you live on in me. It’s thanks to you that I’m alive, because I can br...
I had to wonder, though, if there's something about a murderer, particularly a confident one, that gives him a certain charisma or charm that I, in particular, am susceptible to. I mean, there's a reason more women are attracted to Dracula than repel...
If I woke up one morning and realized that all I ever was going to be was a business man, I'd probably die. All my dreams would be shattered. Early in life I had many dreams. I dreamed of being a great basketball star. I dreamed of being a preacher. ...
One of my professors once told me that the last official act of the British monarchy was when Queen Victoria refused to sign a law that made same-sex acts illegal. It would have made me think more highly of her, except the reason she objected was bec...
I have a hundred-year-old aunt who aspires to sainthood, and whose only wish has been to go into the convent, but no congregation, not even the Little Sisters of Charity, could tolerate her for more than a few weeks, so the family has had to look aft...
He knew all the stories. His grandfather had given them to him when he sat between the old man’s knees as a child. It was a comfort, though, to hear them again. To call them to mind. All these stories that made him more than just a vintner and more...
I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interw...
Anyway, it was big and I set up the trickiest structure. Accounts all over the world and money flying around like... The right mix of drugs and Remy Martin. Like a big whirl of light and money, pulsating like it was alive, like one of those glowing j...
We must all allow ourselves the fantasy of projection from time to time, a chance to clothe ourselves in the imaginary gowns and tails of what has never been and never will be. This gives some polish to our tarnished lives, and sometimes we may choos...
People always laugh at me when I tell them I’m scared of pencils, because they can’t fathom why anyone would fear a puncture wound or lead poisoning from a pencil, especially now that it’s impossible to get lead poisoning since they don’t act...
The way he said her name made my heart cramp. In all my years of word collecting, I've learned this to be a tried and true fact: I can very often tell how much a person loves another person by the way they say their name. I think that's one of the be...
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runway sun, I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love. If you want me again look for me under your boot soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean. Failing to fetch me at first...
These books have not made George nobler or better or more truly wise. It is just that he likes listening to their voices, the one or the other, acording to his mood. He misuses them quite ruthlessly - despite the respectful way he has to talk about t...
Well, cast your mind back to the books he wrote. What is the one theme that keeps recurring from book to book? It is that the woman doesn’t fall in love with the man. The man may or may not love the woman; but the woman never loves the man. What do...
