He turns the key. Presto! It opens this book of odd tales which transform the Brothers Grimm. Transform? As if an enlarged paper clip could be a piece of sculpture. (And it could.)
THERE is something in the autumn that is native to my blood— Touch of manner, hint of mood; And my heart is like a rhyme, With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what is a theatre? are they two and not one? Can they exist separate? Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion. O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cru...
Magic is a state of mind. It is often portrayed as very black and gothic, and that is because certain practitioners played that up for a sense of power and prestige. That is a disservice. Magic is very colorful. Of this, I am sure.
Of course, Marxism is an example of what Carl Popper would have called a 'World Three' structure, in that it's got immense power as an idea, but you couldn't actually hold up anything in the world and say: 'this is Marxism'.
You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.
There are all these things I want to do when I don't have to finish a book. But I have to keep writing because I keep having children.
An economy genuinely local and neighborly offers to localities a measure of security that they cannot derive from a national or a global economy controlled by people who, by principle, have no local commitment.
You are a woman: you must never speak what you think; your words must contradict your thoughts, but your actions may contradict your words.
Another Christmas Poem Blood Christmas, here again. Let us raise a loving cup: Peace on earth, goodwill to men, And make them do the washing-up.
A Poem does not grow by jerks. As trees in Spring produce a new ring of tissue, so does every poet put forth a fresh outlay of stuff at the same season.
Do you know what would hold me together on a battlefield? The sense that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and the rest of them wrote!
I might enjoy writing some ghost stories set in Japan because their whole idea about the spirit world is so interesting.
I've always felt I want to be of service to the world somehow. I haven't yet figured out how to do it, and I may never figure out how to do it.
Kabuki is the way that I so often write; Noh is how I would write if I were more 'spiritual,' more understated, or perhaps just older.
Perhaps Bug and Tony should have been allies. But any successful structure of domination always gets the weak to reject each other.
Death is ordinary. Behold it, subtract its patterns and lessons from those of the death that weapons bring, and maybe the residue will show what violence is.
And when life's sweet fable ends, Soul and body part like friends; No quarrels, murmurs, no delay; A kiss, a sigh, and so away.
Homo homini lupus [man is wolf to man]. Who in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion?
We are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself.
He stood at the table facing Flora and blowing heavily on his tea and staring at her. Flora did not mind. It was quite interesting: like having tea with a rhinoceros.
