Anyone not paranoid in this world must be crazy. . . . Speaking of paranoia, it's true that I do not know exactly who my enemies are. But that of course is exactly why I'm paranoid.
The death penalty would be even more effective, as a deterrent, if we executed a few innocent people more often.
When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.
If there's anything I hate, it's the vibraphone. And the cha-cha-cha. And Latin rhythms generally.
Those art lovers who pride themselves mostly on *taste* usually possess no other talent.
Going to bed with Gertrude Stein, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Susan Sontag, or Margaret Thatcher: There are some things one prefers neither to do nor to have done.
How did Haydn and Mozart produce such vast quantities of formally perfect art? They worked from a perfect formula. In music, Beethoven was the Great Emancipator.
I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.
Nature, like Maimonides said, is mainly a good place to throw beer cans on Sunday afternoons.
When riding my old Harley a ninety per at midnight down the Via Roma in Naples, I kept one consolation firmly in mind: If anything goes wrong, I'll never have time to regret it.
Rocks, like louseworts and snail darters and pupfish and 3rdworld black, lesbian, feminist, militant poets, have rights, too. Especially the right to exist.
The national parks belong to everyone. To the people. To all of us. The government keeps saying so and maybe, in this one case at least, the government is telling the truth. Hard to believe, but possible.
The result of this bestial lust is an indiscriminate and promiscuous splaying of all of my energies- wanting all, I accomplish nothing; desiring everything, I satisfy nothing and am satisfied by nothing.
When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble.
The great question of life is not the question of death but the question of life. Fear of death shames us all.
James Joyce buried himself in his great work. _Finnegan's Wake_ is his monument and his tombstone. A dead end.
Appearance versus reality? Appearance is reality, God damn it!
Among politicians and businessmen, *Pragmatism* is the current term for 'To hell with our children.'
A crowded society is a restrictive society; an overcrowded society becomes an authoritarian, repressive and murderous society.
For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!
The knowledge that refuge is available, when and if needed, makes the silent inferno of the desert more easily bearable. Mountains complement desert as desert complements city, as wilderness complements and completes civilization.
Suicide: Don't knock it if you ain't tried it.
The canyon country does not always inspire love. To many it appears barren, hostile, repellent - a fearsome mostly waterless land of rock and heat, sand dunes and quicksand, cactus, thornbrush, scorpion, rattlesnake, and agaraphobic distances. To those who see our land in that manner, the best reply is, yes, you are right, it is a dangerous and terrible place. Enter at your own risk. Carry water. Avoid the noonday sun. Try to ignore the vultures. Pray frequently.
Phoenix, Arizona: an oasis of ugliness in the midst of a beautiful wasteland.
I now find the most marvelous things in the everyday, the ordinary, the common, the simple and tangible.
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