In order to be respected, authority has got to be respectable.

Life isn’t stable. Stability is unnatural. The only stable society is the police state. You can have a free society or you can have a stable society. You can’t have both. Take your choice. As...

The ugly may be beautiful, the pretty never.

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.

Rules such as ‘Write what you know,’ and ‘Show, don’t tell,’ while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is, in...

The brown paper bag is the only thing civilized man has produced that does not seem out of place in nature.

Anarchy is like custard cooking over a flame; it has to be constantly stirred or it sticks and gets heavy, like government.

The longer Ellen Cherry thought about it, the more convinced she became that the mission of the artist in an overtechnologized, overmasculinized society was to call the old magic back to life.Could it be done?...

Their desperate craving for simplicity sure can create complications. And their pitiful longing for certainty sure can make things unsteady.

Who knows how to make love stay?Tell love you are going to the Junior’s Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will...

Faith is believing in something you know isn’t true.

When we’re incomplete, we’re always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we’re still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take...

I mean that gods do not limit men. Men limit men.

When humans were young, they were pushed around in strollers. When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs. In between, they were just pushed around.

To wit: actions, like sounds, divide the flow of time into beats.[…]The quality of a man’s life depends on the rhyhmic structure he is able to impose upon the input and output of energy.

What is it that separates human beings from the so-called lower animals? Well, as I see it, its exactly one half-dozen significant things: Humor, Imagination, Eroticism- as opposed to the mindless, instinctive mating of glowworms...

He was becoming unstuck, he was sure of that – his bones were no longer wrapped in flesh but in clouds of dust, in hummingbirds, dragonflies, and luminous moths – but so perfect was his...

Perhaps that is why desire causes men calamity. 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...

Well,’ said Can o’ Beans, a bit hesitantly,’ imprecise speech is one of the major causes of mental illness in human beings.’Huh?’Quite so. The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans’ insane...

The notion that inspired play (even when audacious, offensive, or obscene) enhances rather than diminishes intellectual vigor and spiritual fulfillment, the notion that in the eyes of the gods the tight-lipped hero and the wet-cheeked...

Something has got to hold it together. I’m saying my prayers to Elmer, the Greek god of glue.

Are You Ready for New Urban Fragrances?Yeah, I guess I’m ready, but listen:Perfume is a disguise. Since the middle ages, we have worn masks of fruit and flowers in order to conceal from ourselves the...

You know a trillion times more about art than me. But I’ve learned that it isn’t necessary to know all that much. You just make what you wanna see, right? It’s a game, right? It’s...

Since when has leadership been a criterion for sanity? Or vice versa. Hitler was a gifted leader, even Nixon. Exhibit leadership qualities as an adolescent, they pack you off to law school for an anus...

Hawaii once had a rat problem. Then, somebody hit upon a brilliant solution. import mongooses from India. Mongooses would kill the rats. It worked. Mongooses did kill the rats. Mongooses also killed chickens, young pigs,...

There was a marvelous, dark lyricism in his voice, the kind of defiance that is rooted in deep loneliness.

People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up.

Reality is subjective, and there’s an unenlightened tendency in this culture to regard something as ‘important’ only if ‘tis sober and severe. Sure and still you’re right about your Cheerful Dum, only they’re not so...

You knows dat in New Orleans is not morning ’til dee sun come up.

The highest men are calm, silent and unknown…The true masters seldom reveal themselves, except in the vibrations the leave behind, and upon which the lesser gurus build their doctrines.

How can one person be more real than any other? Well, some people do hide and others seek. Maybe those who are in hiding – escaping encounters, avoiding surprises, protecting their property, ignoring their fantasies,...

Cries for help are frequently inaudible.

As unrefined and basic as an animal’s emotional equipment may be, it is not insensitive to freedom. Somewhere in the archives of crudest instinct is recorded the truth that it is better to be endangered...

Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.

hasn’t got a damn thing to do with anything, ‘cause all it has to do with is nothing. Nothingness. Okay? It doesn’t develop the mind, it dissolves the mind. Self-improvement? Forget it, baby. It erases...

There is evidence that the honoree [Leonard Cohen] might be privy to the secret of the universe, which, in case you’re wondering, is simply this: Everything is connected. Everything. Many, if not most, of the...

Laws, it is said, are for the protection of the people. It’s unfortunate that there are no statistics on the number of lives that are clobbered yearly as a result of laws: outmoded laws; laws...

If you’re honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you’re forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full...

That’s for God sure. People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up.

There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.

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...

It is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless, and peaceful, like the flowers, than large, conservative, repressed, fearful, and aggressive, like the thunder lizards; a lesson, by the way, that the Earth has yet...

Humans have evolved to their relatively high state by retaining the immature characteristics of their ancestors. Humans are the most advanced of mammals – although a case could be made for the dolphins – because...

Whether a man is a criminal or a public servant is purely a matter of perspective.

The sky was the color of Edgar Allan Poe’s pajamas.

Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek

We modern human beings are looking at life, trying to make some sense of it; observing a ‘reality’ that often seems to be unfolding in a foreign tongue–only we’ve all been issued the wrong librettos....

White folks have controlled New Orleans with money and guns, black folks have controlled it with magic and music, and although there has been a steady undercurrent of mutual admiration, an intermingling of cultures unheard...

That’s the way the mind works: the brain is genetically disposed towards organization, yet if not controlled, will link even the most imagerial fragment to another on the flimsiest pretense and in the most freewheeling...

Purpose! Purposes are for animals with a hell of a lot more dignity than the human race! Just hop on that strange torpedo and ride it to wherever it’s going