five from...

interesting words from interesting people

Permalink Michael O’Donoghue The only difference between television and a lava lamp is that television has slightly better audio.~~~~~Licorice is the liver of candy.~~~~~A Madagascar Hissing Roach chasing Jerry Lewis. That would be a really neat treat.~~~~~Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy.~~~~~You only live once, and usually not even then.~~~~~
Permalink Eugene Ionesco A nose that can see is worth two that sniff.~~~~~Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.~~~~~A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.~~~~~I’ve always been suspicious of collective truths.~~~~~It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.~~~~~
Permalink Aldous Huxley Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.~~~~~That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.~~~~~After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.~~~~~Every man’s memory is his private literature.~~~~~Hell isn’t merely paved with good intentions; it’s walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too.~~~~~
Permalink Ned Rorem Artists, by definition innocent, don’t steal. But they do borrow without giving back. ~~~~~Sooner or later you’ve heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love. The same holds true for music. ~~~~~Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. ~~~~~Art means to dare - and to have been right. ~~~~~Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin. ~~~~~
Permalink Alan Watts No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.~~~~~The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.~~~~~Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.~~~~~Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.~~~~~Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.~~~~~
Permalink Robert Anton Wilson Only the madman is absolutely sure. ~~~~~The Constitution admittedly has a few defects and blemishes, but it still seems a hell of a lot better than the system we have now.~~~~~The longer one is alone, the easier it is to hear the song of the earth.~~~~~You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.~~~~~Each mans spills the drink he loves. ~~~~~
Permalink Chuck Palahniuk What we don’t understand we can make mean anything.~~~~~Masochism is a valuable job skill.~~~~~If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t.~~~~~When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?~~~~~Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.~~~~~
Permalink Vladimir Nabokov Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.~~~~~Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.~~~~~There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.~~~~~Our imagination flies — we are its shadow on the earth.~~~~~Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.~~~~~
Permalink Groucho Marx Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.~~~~~Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?~~~~~I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.~~~~~Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.~~~~~Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.~~~~~
Permalink David Sedaris If you aren’t cute, you may as well be clever.~~~~~I haven’t got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.~~~~~Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.~~~~~Sometimes the sins you haven’t committed are all you have left to hold onto.~~~~~When shit brings you down, just say ‘fuck it’, and eat yourself some motherfucking candy.~~~~~
Permalink Margaret Atwood An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.~~~~~I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.~~~~~Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.~~~~~Never pray for justice, because you might get some.~~~~~Canada was built on dead beavers.~~~~~
Permalink Tallulah Bankhead If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.~~~~~My father warned me about men and booze, but he never mentioned a word about women and cocaine.~~~~~I think the Republican party should be placed in drydock and have the barnacles scraped off its bottom.~~~~~Television could perform a great service in mass education, but there’s no indication its sponsors have anything like this on their minds.~~~~~The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. ~~~~~
Permalink Rita Mae Brown The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself.~~~~~You can’t be truly rude until you understand good manners.~~~~~Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.~~~~~Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.~~~~~I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.~~~~~
Permalink Neil Tennant I was torn between becoming a pop star or becoming the pope.~~~~~The idea of cool is a stifling one. It’s much more refreshing to be uncool.~~~~~I am totally against role models.~~~~~I think in Britain people expect their entertainers to be homosexual.~~~~~Secretly, I admire the queen.~~~~~
Permalink David Lynch The more unknowable the mystery, the more beautiful it is.~~~~~Tenderness can be just as abstract as insanity.~~~~~I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents.~~~~~We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.~~~~~Hats! They’re great! ~~~~~
  • Alan Watts
  • Aldous Huxley
  • Allen Ginsberg
  • AndrĂ© Gide
  • Andrew Harvey
  • Andy Warhol
  • Bertrand Russell
  • Brian Eno
  • Cecil Beaton
  • Christopher Isherwood
  • David Lynch
  • David Sedaris
  • Derek Jarman
  • Diana Vreeland
  • Djuna Barnes
  • Dorothy Parker
  • Edith Sitwell
  • Edward Albee
  • Eugene Ionesco
  • Federico Fellini
  • Fran Lebowitz
  • Gertrude Stein
  • Gloria Steinem
  • Gore Vidal
  • Henry Rollins
  • Hermann Hesse
  • H.L. Mencken
  • Isaac Asimov
  • Jack Kerouac
  • James Baldwin
  • Jean Cocteau
  • Jean Genet
  • Jean Paul Gaultier
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti
  • John Lydon
  • John Waters
  • Kurt Vonnegut
  • Laurie Anderson
  • Lillian Hellman
  • Lydia Lunch
  • Margaret Atwood
  • Michael O'Donoghue
  • Morrissey
  • Ned Rorem
  • Neil Tennant
  • Noel Coward
  • Oscar Wilde
  • Patti Smith
  • Quentin Crisp
  • R. Buckminster Fuller
  • Rita Mae Brown
  • Robert Anton Wilson
  • Stephen Fry
  • Stephen Sondheim
  • Susan Sontag
  • Tallulah Bankhead
  • Tennessee Williams
  • Truman Capote
  • Umberto Eco
  • Vivekananda
  • Vladimir Nabokov
  • W. H. Auden
  • William S. Burroughs
  • Yukio Mishima
  • Zora Neale Hurston