The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of...
Even as I'm shoveling up my hooter, I realize the sad truth. Coke bores me, It bores us all. We're jaded cunts, in a scene we hate, a city we hate, pretending that we're at the center of the universe, trashing ourselves with crap drugs to stave off t...
I realized there really is a natural interplay between my spirituality and my creativity. When I enter into a spirit of prayer, I can cultivate a receptive space and actually ask God for creative ideas that will enhance my my praying. Then these crea...
You should've thought of that before becoming a fireman." "Thought!" he said. "Was I given a choice? I was raised to think the best thing in the world to read. The best thing is television and radio and ball games and a home I can't afford and, Good ...
Early on I realized that I had to hire people smarter and ore qualified than I was in a number of different fields, and I had to let go of a lot of decision-making. I can't tell you how hard that is. But if you've imprinted your values on the people ...
Now he realized the truth: that sacrifice was no purchase of freedom. It was like a great elective office, it was like an inheritance of power - to certain people at certain times an essential luxury, carrying with it not a guarantee but a responsibi...
The music enchanted the air. It was like the south wind, like a warm night, like swelling sails beneath the stars, completely and utterly unreal... It made everything spacious and colourful, the dark stream of life seemed pulsing in it; there were no...
I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, an...
There are times in my life when I have been medicine for some while poison for others. I used to think I was a victim of my story until I realized the truth; that I am the creator of my story. I choose what type of person I will be and what type of i...
Whatever you want in life, do one thing every day which brings you a little closer towards attainment of your goal. Even if it means spending a few minutes. No matter how small the effort is, if done consistently, it will start compounding and before...
I can't deceive myself that out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the ...
Even though this princess loved the oak and the castle and her mother, the queen, she tired of the beautiful swamp, of her surroundings. You see, as she grew she came to realize that if she looked too closely, she could recognize evil things in the s...
I won't be stuck in traffic 'til I see how rugged my path is And right now I'm loving how fast my troubles are fasting No they don't bother me oh realizing I'm psychopathic A wild beast, baby I'm gladly running after Yes a thing called peace outlasti...
Okay? ?" People in the hall stared at us. I realized I was practically shouting. "He's out of his mind. I thought we decided you weren't going to see him anymore.” "You decided, Rose. Not me." There was an edge in her voice I hadn't heard in a whil...
[regarding a toothache] It made me realize how much one's mind is at the mercy of one's physical well-being, as at times I felt quite demented. My admiration for people who withhold information under torture has increased ten-fold since this ghastly ...
What in God's name did he want me to say? That I agreed with him completely at how our kiss had been successful? That it had meant as much as a kiss I'd drop on top of a child's head before bed to him? Well I wouldn't lie for the sake of lying. I'd r...
Every time they saw him, they recognized him and knew him and expected things of him. And every time he came up blank. It was like watching someone digging where they knew they'd buried something precious, digging and digging and realizing that whate...
In Shanghai, there were several pro-right circles of former officers. They realized that the Great War and European revolutions were a direct consequence of rotten liberalism. Words like order, family, discipline and duty didn't mean anything anymore...
I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his ...
Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this. Hell, I am doing better than this! What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer tha...
Why wasn't I already kissing this woman? Why wasn't I naked, eating violets, and playing music underneath the open sky? Looking around the room again, everything seemed terribly ridiculous. These people sitting on their benches wearing layers on laye...
