Cool Quotations

I am always hearing, reading or coming across statements or quotations that strike me in one way or another and for years have said to myself "You should put that on the screen saver so you don't forget it" but, of course, I never have. So…. one of the advantages of having my own website is that I can start doing that. These are in no particular order, other than, as I read or re-read something, I am sticking it up here. (This also gives you an indication of what I am currently reading!) Some are amusing, some tragic, some clichéd and some just plain offensive. Enjoy!

Raj Patel "The Value of Nothing"

“There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs."

Thomas Jefferson

“I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."

Geoff Ryman "The Child Garden"

“There is always a Consensus. We always do what it wants us to do because we are part of it and it is part of us. We are embedded in it, and so we obey the logic. We are born, we have to eat, we are left alone and we have to survive in the ways that are open to us. We obey the logic of love and sex and of health and disease of ageing and infancy and death. If we escape one framework, we move into another. If we make a new framework, we imprison our children in it. We have always fought to escape the Consensus and have always done its will. We fight and obey in one motion."

Don Sakers "Dance for the Ivory Madonna"

“Those who dance are thought mad by those who hear not the music"

Soren Kierkegaard

“Life must be lived forwards, however, it can only be understood backwards"

Andrew Boyd "Daily Afflictions"

"I have seen things in the darkness, strange and rare."

Oscar Wilde

"If you are going to tell people the truth, you had better make them laugh or they will kill you."

Another Nathanism

"Okay, okay...which is better; "Terrific" or "Fabulous"? My heirarchy chart of Ianisms is missing."

Ricardo Pinto "The Standing Dead"

“The most elegant system of domination is one in which the dominated are unaware of their state; they believe the world has always been and always will be as they know it; that the order under which they toil is as immutable, as unassailabel as the sky. War is a clumsy means of enforcing such dominion. Not only is it costly and wasteful in of resources, but it is difficult to control and subject to catastrophic and unforseeable changes of fortune. Famine is a surer tool of statecraft, with the crucial proviso that it must be seen to arise naturally from the land. Hunger will keep not only the body, but the mind in chains."

Ricardo Pinto "The Standing Dead"

“Venerate your aged for in their memories the past finds its only refuge."

David Wojnarowicz - personal diary entry about living with AIDS

“I feel like it's happening to this person called David, but not to me. It's happening to this person who looks exactly like me, is as tall as me, and I can see through his eyes as if I am in his body, but it's still not me. So I go on and occasionally this person called David cries or makes plans for the possibility of death or departure or going to a doctor for checkups or dabbles in underground drugs in hopes for more time, and then enventually I get the body back and that David disappears for a while and I go about my daily business doing what I do, what I need or care to do. I sometimes feel bad for that David and can't believe he is dying."

Patrick Moore "Beyond Shame"

“These men were artists using sex as their medium. The gay male community in the late 1970s might be seen as a collective engaged in an unprecedented exploration of their own minds and bodies. The very radicalism of this experiment, and its dependence upon drugs and extreme emotional states, ensured that some members of the collective would find spiritual ecstasy while others would find degradation. Because the experiment necessitated gay men isolating themselves from mainstream America in a way that reinforced the view of gay men as deviants, the stakes were very high. Was this performance worth the risk? We cannot know, because the performace was never finished."

Daniel Harris "The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture"

“The eventual disappearance of gay culture constitutes a significant loss, not just for gay people, but for American culture in general...turning us into a drab and homogeneous mass of identical citizens."

C. S. Friedman "In Conquest Born"

“Religion, properly controlled, is the single most powerful manipulative tool in the arsenal of man againts his own kind."

Nathan's Law of Junk Food!

“The better it tastes, the more toxic it is!"

C. S. Friedman "This Alien Shore"

“God save us from an Earth in which all men are the same. God save us from... a culture which assumes that for it's norm. Give me a thousand people speaking different tongues, worshipping different Gods, and dreaming different dreams and I will make of them a greater nation than you can make with ten thousand of your gengineered duplicates. For mine will have the spark of greatness in them, while yours will live for conformity, worship mediocrity, and take their carefully modulated delight in predigested dreams.”

Dan Savage "Skipping towards Gommorah"

“Isn't it odd how the same conservatives who complain about "blame America first" lefties never challenge the "nothing nice to say about America" paleoconservatives.”

Voltaire

“If we believe absurdities, we will commit atrocities”

Candas Jane Dorsey "A Paradigm of Earth"

“Art cannot by its nature be entropic.”

“Live is an active verb as well as a passive one. Living well takes more than information, energy, or opportunity alone, but the three together begin to define the process. The result is gestalt, synergy, and mystery. As it should be, to promote the growth of understanding and with it joy.”

“It also seems to me that there is the question of capitalism,”says Blue pensively. “Marx spoke of how capitalism creates individualism…”
Morgan laughed. “You’re becoming a Marxist now?”
“Perhaps not. But he was an interesting writer. ‘Commodities become fetishes under capitalism’-don’t you find that illuminating?”
“Oh, sure, but I still have trouble separating the book from the dogma that was created around it, and from the toll of human misery that ensued from the opportunistic use of that dogma.”
“That seems a limited point of view,” said Blue sternly, but Morgan was not cowed.
“Indeed it is limited,” she said, “and it is the exact problem I have with Christianity, marriage, capitalism, and for that matter Islam, Confucianism, and Taoism, though I don’t know as much about them, except what we read together. It’s the problem of philosophies that have amassed a history of pain. Can they ever exist in purity again? Can one ever come to them without remembering who has died to keep their purists happy?”

“There’s never enough of anything to go around. Look at the third world. Food, ideas, money, fame, happiness-everybody wants some, and hardly anybody gets any, and the ones who have it think they don’t have enough. The world is hungry, and I am too.”

Chris Moriarty "Spin State"

“We do not experience time flowing, or passing. What we experience are differences between our present perceptions and our present memories of past perceptions. We interpret those differences, correctly, as evidence that the universe changes with time. We also interpret them, incorrectly, as evidence that our consciousness, or the present, or something, moves, through time…We exist in multiple versions, in universes called “moments”…It is tempting to suppose that the moment of which we are aware is the only real one, or is at least a little more real than the others. But this is just solipsism. All moments are physically real. The whole of the multiverse is physically real. Nothing else is.”

Gregory Maguire "Wicked, the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West"

“"Tis very strange men should be fond of being thought wickeder than they are." - Daniel Defoe, A system of Magick"”

“Given a long enough time, of course, a wide enough frame, there is nothing said or done, ever, that isn’t ironic in the end.”

“Everything is gorgeous once it’s gone.”

Epitaph on the tombstone of Leonard P. Matlovich, Congressional Cemetary

"When I was in the miltary they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one."

Dan Savage "The Kid - What happened after my boyfriend and I decided to go get pregnant"

"Beer is at once the cause and the solution to all of life's problems"

"..a picture that pretty nearly sums up the abortion debate: two men who will never need or cause anyone else to need an abortion arguing semantics and driving everyone in earshot out of the room."

"If I’m flying somewhere, I imagine my awful death in a plane crash and picture Terry’s stunned face when he realizes that I never made a will. At this writing, none of the planes I’ve been on has crashed, which I credit to my overworked, underpaid, and unsettling imagination. I’m convinced that the day I get on a plane without first forming a clear mental picture of it bursting into flames and falling to earth will be the day I’m on a plane that crashes. It’s not just plane crashes that I picture. I also see car wrecks, train crashes, muggings, earthquakes, gay—bashings, waiters licking my silverware, and my mother walking in while I’m masturbating. Contemplating worst possible outcomes is my insurance that they won’t come to pass. Once I’ve imagined the worst possible outcome I can generally let it go, sit back, and enjoy the flight/drive/ride/straight boys/meal/wank/etc. I know it works because none of the planes I’ve been on has ever crashed, I’ve never been in a car wreck, and my mother has never walked in on me masturbating (so far as I know, and if I’m wrong, Mom, I DON’T WANT TO KNOW). When I hear or witness a worst-possible-outcome scenario that I wouldn’t have foreseen, I get very upset. For instance, there’s a moment in Titanic when the ship is sinking, and people are jumping into the water. Suddenly, the ship breaks in two and the Titanic falls on the heads of hundreds of people bobbing in the water beneath it, killing them. The Titanic, of course, was the largest moving thing ever built by the hand of man (LMTEBBTHOM). Had I been on the LMTEBBTHOM’s maiden voyage, I would’ve run the worst possible outcomes through my head. LMTEBBTHOM might sink and I’d drown; or a fire might break out on board and I’d burn to death; or some bad food might be served on the LMTEBBTHOM and I’d die of food poisoning. But I would never in a million years have imagined the LMTEBBTHOM
could be lifted into the air and dropped on my head. I had to leave the theater. I believe I inherited this kind of morbid Irish superstition from my mother, and I know where it leads. One day, I will be my mother, worrying whenever my children are out of sight, convinced they’re dead when they’re out five minutes later than they said they would be. My mother has always insisted that we let her know where we are at all times so that she doesn’t have to worry, but she worries nonetheless. Only when we were home, as kids, or when she gets us on the phone, as adults, would she stop imagining worst possible outcomes for us, be they car crashes, falls out of trees, or collisions with trains. But you know what? My mother has lived in terror of some tragedy befalling her children all her life, and so far no tragedies have befallen us. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Clearly this system of my mother’s works."

Hart Seely, Ed. "Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld"
"The Unknown " (Briefings of Rumsfeld)."

"As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns.
The ones we don't know we don't know"

Laurie Anderson "Stories from the Nerve Bible"
Credited to Minerva Miller, "valentine" ca 1850

"Remember me is all I ask
and if remembered be a task
Forget me."

Victoria Brownworth "Too Queer"

"I've learned that members of individual oppressed groups rarely see the global nature of oppression, rarely see beyond their own personal needs. I've learned that Jews will almost always come to the aid of Christians, people of color will almost always come to the aid of whites, women will almost always come to the aid of men, queers will almost come to the aid of straights, the poor will almost always come to the aid of the better off- and almost always none of those things will be true in reverse."

Victoria Brownworth "Too Queer"

"We will never achieve our rights by relying on straight "tolerance." Tolerance, history has repeatedly shown, can be taken away in a nanosecond. Rather, we have to build our movement based on self-acceptance and self-acknowledgment. That is the basis for real change, for real power. It is pride. Pride in our queer/dyke/faggot selves."

Debi Gliori "No Matter What"

"Small said, "But what about when we are dead and gone, will you love me then, does love go on?"

…Large (replied) "Look at the stars, how they shine and glow, some of the stars died a long time ago. Still they shine in the evening skies, for you see…love like starlight never dies…""

Charles Ludlum "The Artificial Jungle"

"And I look up at the stars, the thousand unseeing eyes that look back on this little speck of dust we call the world, and I ask -What was my crime compared to your indifference."

Unknown "Ecstasy"

"The heat makes us go.
Stifling, like a starched shirt.
It bids us to disrobe and stand naked in the window, dripping.
A cube of ice passes over our lips and cools them.
It feels electric, like the moment we called each other and eloped to where no one knew us,
let alone cared who we were or what we were doing with each other.
Bathe me now in your sweat again.
Let it pool on my chest once more, and trace a cross on my forehead, and let me go out among the world as clear as a virgin's smock, clothed in your blessing."

Rev. Martin J. Niemoller - Statement about the failure of Germans to speak out against the Nazis, 1945

"In Germany they came first for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up."

Robert De Niro "Wag the Dog"

"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow."

Julia Lam "Lam's Law of Fast Food"

"They always fuck you at the drive through"

Meredith's Law of Fine Dining

"The quality of a restaurant is inversely proportional to the size of the pepper grinder"

Jeff's First Rule

"Fuck 'em, they're trash!"

Christina's First Rule

"I'd rather be evil than stupid"

Holly Johnson

"Are we living in a land where sex and horror are the new gods?"

Neil Gaiman "American Gods"

"I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars, I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time…and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies, I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it."

Harlan Coben "Tell No One"

"..Death is a great teacher. It's just too harsh.
I wish I could tell you that through the tragedy I mined some undiscovered, life-altering absolute that I could pass on to you. I didn't. The clichés apply - people are what count, life is precious, materialism is overrated, the little things matter, live in the moment - and I can repeat them to you ad nauseam. You might listen, but you won't internalize. Tragedy hammers it home. Tragedy etches it into your soul. You might not be happier. But you will be better."