And it rained a fever. And it rained a silence. And it rained a sacrifice. And it rained a miracle. And it rained sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem.
Mr. and Mrs. Hankshaw were summoned from the waiting room where Saturday Evening Post fantasies had clouded their instinctive parental concern the way that Norman Rockwell's sentimental ideas cloud the purity of a blank canvas.
Education is for growth and fulfillment.
I have hitched and hiked over every state and half the nations, through blizzards and under rainbows, in deserts and cities, backward and side-ways, upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamber.
And how dangerous and dumb it can be to embalm yourself in the attractive amber of the past.
Whether meaningful or meaningless, the game of life is there to be played - and the animal in his animal way seems to "know" it and the cage is an offense to what his inner animal voice tells him is right and true.
If it is committed in the name of God or country, there is no crime so heinous that the public will not forgive it.
I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to temp us, to make it the more difficult for us to capture the grand prize: the safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both men and gods.
How can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointment can bring?
I may be mad, he thought, but I prefer the shit of this world to whatever sweet ambrosias the next may offer.
Nonetheless, the fiery dreams did fade, and inside rooms made of clay and painted blue, sweeter visions were nourished.
The ugly may be beautiful, the pretty never.
It might be noted here that Freudian analysts of fairy tales have suggested that kissing toads and frogs is symbolized fellatio. In that regard, Princess Leigh-Cheri was, on a conscious level, innocent, although not so naïve as Queen Tilli, who though fellatio was an obscure Italian opera and was annoyed that she couldn't find the score.
Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense.
Of the Seven Dwarfs, the only one who shaved was Dopey. That should tell us something about the wisdom of shaving.
By identifying with our desires and taking them too seriously, we not only increase our susceptibility to disappointment, we actually create a climate inhospitable to the free and easy fulfillment of those desires.
Whether I'm unduly sensitive to this pain because I'm a princess—could the whole world be the pea under my mattress?—I don't know, but because I'm a princess, I might be able to do something to help lessen humanity's pain.
The illusion of the seventh veil was the illusion that you could get somebody else to do it for you. To think for you. To hang on your cross. The priest, the rabbi, the imam, the swami, the philosophical novelist were traffic cops, at best. They might direct you through a busy intersection, but they wouldn't follow you home and park your car.
Seattle, the mild green queen: wet and willing, cedar-scented, and crowned with slough grass, her toadstool scepter tilted toward Asia, her face turned ever upward in the rain; the sovereign who washes her hands more persistently than the most fastidious proctologist.
It's meaning that is of no meaning. That paradox is the key to the meaning of meaning. To look for meaning--or the lack of it--in things is a game played by beings of limited consciousness. Behind everything in life is a process that is beyond meaning. Not beyond understanding, mind you, but beyond meaning.
It was quite likely the best advice I've ever received. I can't help but wonder what my life would have been like if I'd actually followed it.
Joseph Campbell was so conversant with the world of wonders that he awakened the potential for wonder in everyone he touched. He unbuttoned the secret earth for us and let the inexhaustible inspiration of Being stream through.
There is a comfort in conformity, a security in control, that is appealing. There is a thrill in domination, and we are all secretly attracted to violence.
The word desire suggests that there is something we do not have. If we have everything already, then there can be no desire, for there is nothing left to want. I think that what the Buddha may have been trying to tell us is that we have it all, each of us, all the time; therefore, desire is simply unnecessary.
I realize that you've always avoided all but the most rudimentary involvements with men, and, I might add, you've been wise.
The brutal truth is, we're scarcely 'educating' children at all. Even if you overlook the guilt, fear, bigotry, and dangerous anti-intellectual flapdoodle being funneled into young brains by schools on the religious right, what we're doing is training kids to be cogs in the wheels of commerce.
My faith is whatever makes me feel good about being alive. If your religion doesn't make you feel good to be alive, what the hell is the point of it?
How different conditions would be today in the Middle East, how much saner and safer the entire earth might be, had those Christians not defiled a civilization too advanced for their arrogant little minds to understand.
Everywhere a buffalo fell, said Switters, a monster sprang up in its place.
Beer can lead men to think they're mighty and foul-mouthed women to believe themselves amusing and hip.
There were no mail-order catalogues in 1492. Marco Polo's journal was the wish book of Renaissance Europe. Then, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and landed in Sears' basement.
Gods and men create one another, destroy one another, though by different means.
Giant sunflowers, like junkie scarecrows on the nod dozed in one spot with their dry heads dropped upon their breastbones. Their lives extended another day, flies buzzed everything within their range, monotonously eulogizing themselves, like the patriots who persist in praising the glory of a culture long after it is decadent and doomed.
There is a sense in which a painted stick is a stick in bloom. This stick points to the hidden face of God. Sometimes it points to you.
It is more important to be free than to be happy.
Every individual has to assume responsibility for his or her own actions, even the poor and the young. A social system that decrees otherwise is inviting intellectual atrophy and spiritual stagnation.
To specialize is to brush one tooth. When a person specializes he channels all of his energies through one narrow conduit; he knows one thing extremely well and is ignorant of almost everything else.
Some folks hide, and some folks seek, and seeking, when it's mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous can be a form of hiding.
Jerusalem was where it all went down, man. It was connected to heaven like Spanish Harlem was connected to Puerto Rico.
Minds were made for blowing.
On second thought, it's unlikely that anybody can teach another to excel in bed. Rather, what they might do is awaken in the other her or his predisposition for copulative excellence.
The full moon - the mandala of the sky.
Self-esteem is for sissies. Accept that you're a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace - and maybe even glory.
Outlaws, like lovers, poets, and tubercular composers who cough blood onto piano keys, do their finest work in the slippery rays of the moon.
Our greatest human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.
Isn't fixity the hallmark of the living dead?
Claude could simply not imagine the couples he met at parties or passed on the street ever being locked in carnal embrace.
Well, Daddy, I used to believe that artists went crazy in the process of creating the beautiful works of art that kept society sane. Nowadays, though, artists make intentionally ugly art that's only supposed to reflect society rather than inspire it. So I guess we're all loony together now, loony rats in the shithouse of commercialism.
