Nuggets and Aphorisms

The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.

ONCE I LIVED IN CAPITALS,
MY LIFE INTENSELY PHALLIC,
but now I'm sadly lowercase,
with the occasional italic.

In a way, the most morally troubling thing about killing chickens is that after a while it is no longer morally troubling.

The Catholics say, “Shit happens.” The Protestants say, “The other guy is responsible for the shit.” The Muslims say “The shit is the Will of Allah.” The Jews go, “Why, oh why, is all the shit falling only on us?" The Buddhists reply, “But there is no shit.” And the Japanese Zen masters whisper, “Listen closely and you will hear the sound of shit falling."

Here I sit
Broken-hearted
Came to shit
But only farted

In most men there is something evil which resents greatness in others. With what delight are tales repeated of people's private lives as though the fact that Marlowe was a homosexual, Shelley a nympholept, Dr Johnson a masochist, Dostoevsky a gambler, Turner a miser or that Dickens maintained at least one mistress, in any way affects the greatness of their work? Unable to attack that work, the denigrators think by labelling the men with various weaknesses that they belittle it, which is nonsense. Just as, unable to bear the thought of any one one man being as mighty as Shakespeare, people must invent theories to prove that he was a syndicate or at least that he was a gentleman, a Bacon or a de Vere or a cryptogram, so must tales be whispered about Bradman, and when these tales fail to stick, envy mutters its last poison with the word machine.

Machines can be very beautiful things.

[W]e love the ball more than the game and, for that reason, the dribble more than the pass.

Schmuck! You shortchanged yourself. What studio head tells a director to make a picture longer? Only a nut like me. You shot a saga, and you turned in a trailer. Now give me a movie.

It is better to be pissed off than pissed on.

We were in a lawyer's office and we had to decide at what age Otto would be given a, you know, substantial amount of money. And they said, '15?' and we said, 'God no!' And they kept suggesting older and older ages until we surpassed our own age: 'People of 33 should not be handling this sum of money. That's absurd!'

There seems ... to be a problem with some of our most cherished beliefs about the world: they are leading us, inexorably, to kill one another. A glance at history, or at the pages of any newspaper, reveals that ideas which divide one group of human beings from another, only to unite them in slaughter, generally have their roots in religion. It seems that if our species ever eradicates itself through war, it will not be because it was written in the stars but because it was written in our books; it is what we do with words like “God” and “paradise” and “sin” in the present that will determine our future.

Through my blue fingers, pink grains are falling, haphazard, random, a disorganised stream of silicone that seems pregnant with the possibility of every conceivable shape... but this is illusion.

Things have their shape in time, not space alone. Some marble blocks have statues within them, embedded in their future.

Once upon a time, on a nudist beach, I saw a man sitting, naked, delightedly engrossed in an issue of Playboy.

Just like that man, on the inside, not on the outside, is where the good reader ought to be while reading.

In our country, democracy is a bit like cricket: it's a spectator sport.

We tend to think people are driven by purposeful choices. We think big things drive big behaviors: if people don’t go to school, we think they don’t like school. Instead, most behaviors are driven by the moment. They aren’t purposeful, thought-out choices. That’s an illusion we have about others. Policymakers think that if they get the abstractions right, that will drive behavior in the desired direction. But the world happens in real time. We can talk abstractions of risk and return, but when the person is physically checking off the box on that investment form, all the things going on at that moment will disproportionately influence the decision they make. That’s the temptation element—in real time, the moment can be very tempting. The main thing is to define what is in your mind at the moment of choice. Suppose a company wants to sell more soap. Traditional economists would advise things like making a soap that people like more, or charging less for a bar of soap. A behavioral economist might suggest convincing supermarkets to display your soap at eye level—people will see your brand first and grab it.

It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the world to the scratching of my finger

There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government.

We were lucky enough to get our first home computer in 1978. It was huge, and it cost a lot of money, and we couldn't afford to eat well after that. I always liked computers because I thought you could a lot with them.

In the information age, it’s not just whose army wins, but whose story wins.

Those who are not in power always take an anti-reform position.

To be a modern politician is to have a schedule, not a life.

It's funny how much America can influence countries just by their pop culture. You can do a lot more with pop culture than dropping Patriot missiles. You can get away with so much more. Because it's just so appealing. How many girlfriends I lost because of John Travolta, because the girls were looking for a guy who could dance like Travolta? It's amazing how much we were infiltrated with no resistance. "Saturday Night Fever," "Star Wars," it's like we were living parallel.

West Beyrouth

The vast majority of the press is not interested in covering what is actually happening. They are interesting in covering what they think people want to think is actually happening. Everything is sensationalized. In 1999, it was sensationalized on the positive side, and in 2002, it was sensationalized on the negative side. It's never exactly accurate. As it turns out, accuracy can be quite boring. And quite boring does not sell newspapers and magazines.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Too often a false contrast is made between the impersonal marketplace and the compassionate policies of various government programs. But both systems face the same scarcity of resources and both systems make choices within the contraints of that scarcity. The difference is that one system involves each individual making choices for himself or herself, while the other system involves a smaller number of people making choices for millions of others.

A horse pulling a cart started to walk towards us, followed by other vehicles, then passersby - in short, all the hustle and bustle of a street. We sat with our mouths open, without speaking, filled with amazement.

Economies are driven not by the dollars in people's pockets but by the ideas in their heads.

It's just endless what you can learn from a single work of art. You can fill up the crevices of your life, the cracks of your life, the places where the mortar comes out and falls away--you can fill it up with the love of art.

News is increasingly becoming trivia, and trivia are being passed on as news.

I know it is the practice of journalists to put the end of the story at the beginning and call it a headline. I know that journalism largely consists of saying "Lord Jones Dead" to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive. Your present correspondent thinks that this, like many other journalistic customs, is bad journalism...

She felt terribly sorry for people who suffered from constipation, and she knew that there were many who did. There were probably enough of them to form a political party -- with a chance of government perhaps -- but what would such a party do if it was in power? Nothing, she imagined. It would try to pass legislation, but would fail.

You just wait for the next world, you civilians, then we clergy will show you who's going to be saved. You may have the upper hand now but later on you're really going to be in the shit.

And they all pretend they're Orphans
And their memory's like a train
You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away
And the things you can't remember
Tell the things you can't forget
That history puts a saint in every dream

Raindogs

Bone Machine

Well when I see my parents fight
I don't wanna grow up
They all go out and drinking all night
And I don't wanna grow up
I'd rather stay here in my room
Nothin' out there but sad and gloom
I don't wanna live in a big old Tomb
On Grand Street

When I see the 5 o'clock news
I don't wanna grow up
Comb their hair and shine their shoes
I don't wanna grow up
Stay around in my old hometown
I don't wanna put no money down
I don't wanna get me a big old loan
Work them fingers to the bone
I don't wanna float a broom
Fall in and get married then boom
How the hell did I get here so soon
I don't wanna grow up

[T]he new American home is a residential SUV.

I believe that writers lose a lot when they are seen in the flesh. In the old days the really popular writers were totally anonymous, just a name on the book cover, and this gave them an extraordinary mystique. [...] I believe that this is the ideal condition for a writer, close to anonymity: that is when his maximum authority develops, when the writer does not have a face, a presence, but the world he portrays takes up the whole picture. Like Shakespeare...

[W]e are all minorities in India.

We cannot increase employment by restricting trade.

Anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible and reasonable – as a member of a crowd, he at once becomes a blockhead.

Collapse

Her presence shows that New Salem grows
With milk-producers' yields;
We've got the cow, world's largest cow
That looks across our fields.

Chess is savagely and remorselessly interactive: it is both mental game and contact sport. What's it like? All-in wrestling between octopuses? Centipedal kickboxing? In its apparent languor, its stealthy equipoise, as each player wallows in horrified fascination, waiting to see what his opponent has seen, or has not seen, one may call to mind a certain punitive ritual of the Yanomani. Only one blow at a time is delivered by the long stave. The deliverer of the blow spends many minutes aiming; the receiver of the blow spends many minutes waiting.

The War Against Cliché

Prohibition of Use of Certain Expressions While Labelling of Edible Oils and Fats: The package, label or the advertisements of edible oils and fats shall not use the expressions Super-Refined, Extra-Refined, Micro-Refined, Double-Refined, Ultra-Refined, Anti-Cholestrol, Cholestrol Fighter, Soothing to Heart, Cholestrol Friendly, Saturated Fat Free or such other expressions which are exaggerations of the quality of the product.

If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn't go and look at horses. They'd sit in their studies and say to themselves, "What would I do if I were a horse?"

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine.

Sometimes when you're doing simple things around the house
Maybe you'll think of me and smile
You know I'm tied to you like the buttons on your blouse
Keep me in your heart for awhile

The Wind

As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish, he'd go away

As I was sitting in my chair,
I knew the bottom wasn't there,
Nor legs nor back, but I just sat,
Ignoring little things like that.

Lord, give me chastity, but not yet.

Confessions

If only one person in the world held down a terrified, struggling, screaming little girl, cut off her genitals with a septic blade, and sewed her back up, leaving only a tiny hole for urine and menstrual flow, the only question would be how severely that person should be punished, and whether the death penalty would be a sufficiently severe sanction. But when millions of people do this, instead of the enormity being magnified millions-fold, suddenly it becomes ‘culture’, and thereby magically becomes less, rather than more, horrible, and is even defended by some Western ‘moral thinkers’, including feminists.

The Blank Slate