"I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them."

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“It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades.”

“The expression of satisfaction at the acts of torture one is inflicting on helpless, trussed, naked victims is only part of the story. There is the primal satisfaction of being photographed, to which one is more inclined to respond not with a stiff, direct gaze but with glee. The events are in part designed to be photographed. The grin is a grin for the camera. There would be something missing if, after stacking the naked men, you couldn't take a picture of them.”

“The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.”

“The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean Algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, and Balanchine ballets don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.”

“It depends on me, whether I'm happy within myself.”

“I don't want to express alienation. It isn't what I feel. I'm interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up.”

Resonant Thoughts

"I think, in these days, especially in the States, you have to be a politician or an assassin or something, to really be a superstar."

— Jim Morrison

Music1943–1971

#friendship

"I was in Portland, Oregon, and I was checked in a hotel under the name Charles Edward Cheese. I came back to my room late at night, and there was a note; it was like a letter on my desk. It was addres…"

— Dave Chappelle

Entertainment1973

#friendship

"I think a great many marriages would be saved if people would behave toward one another with the same courtesy that they would extend to someone whom they really didn't know as well as a marriage nece…"

— Robertson Davies

Literature1913–1995

#war

"Good marriages seem to function something like a buddy system-- the people in them swim in their own waters but keep a protective eye on each other, and should the whistle blow, turn up quickly to hol…"

— Merle Shain

Journalism1935–1989

#life