Great Throughts Treasury

"Bones are patient. Bones never tire nor do they run away. When you come upon a man who has been dead many years, his bones will still be lying there, in place, content, patiently waiting, but his flesh will have gotten up and left him. Water is like flesh. Water will not stand still. It is always off to somewhere else; restless, talkative, and curious. Even water in a covered jar will disappear in time. Flesh is water. Stones are like bones. Satisfied. Patient. Dependable. Tell me, then, Alobar, in order to achieve immortality, should you emulate water or stone? Should you trust your flesh or your bones?"

"Boomer had asked her once, in a telephone call from Virginia, Why does this stuff, these hand-painted hallucinations that don’t do nothin’ but confuse the puddin’ out of a perfectly reasonable wall, why does it mean so much to you? It was a poor connection, but he could have sworn he heard her say, In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn’t creak."

"Breathe properly. Stay curious. And eat your beets."

"But do we know how to make love stay?’ I can’t even think about it. The best I can do is play it day by day."

"Certainly that sputterless little candle-flame of the mediocre mind known as 'common sense' has never produced anything worth celebrating."

"Christianity is merely a system for turning priestesses into handmaidens, queens into concubines and goddesses into muses. Who can guess into what it will turn us nymphs?"

"Consider the peaceful repose of the sausage compared with the aggressiveness and violence of bacon."

"Conversation between a princess and an outlaw: If I stand for fairy-tale balls and dragon bait--dragon bait--what do you stand for? Me? I stand for uncertainty, insecurity, bad taste, fun, and things that go boom in the night. Franky, it seems to me that you've turned yourself into a stereotype. You may be right. I don't care. As any car freak will tell you, the old models are the most beautiful, even if they aren't the most efficient. People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve. Well, you may get off on being a beautiful stereotype, regardless of the social consequences, but my conscience won't allow it. And I goddamn refuse to be dragon bait. I'm as capable of rescuing you as you are of rescuing me. I'm an outlaw, not a hero. I never intended to rescue you. We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves."

"Could the Cheerios be in bad voice? Might not they handle well on curves? Do they ejaculate too quickly? Has age affected their timing or are they merely in a mid-season slump? Afflicted with nervous exhaustion or broken hearts, are the Cheerios smiling bravely, insisting that the show must go on?"

"Curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions."

"Death is impatient and thoughtless. It barges into your room when you are right in the middle of something, and it doesn't bother to wipe its boots."

"Death is simple. Life is messy. Give me life, the more complicated the better."

"Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions, and financial ploys are not merely counter-productive but trivial."

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

"Does koala bear poop smell like cough drops?"

"Don't believe everything about me you read on the 'Net."

"Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free."

"Equality is not in regarding different things similarly; equality is in regarding different things differently."

"Even in his agitated mood, he could admire this walking flower of intelligent pink, this industry of honey and brine."

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

"February is pitiless, and it is boring. That parade of red numerals on its page adds up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday reserved for rodents, what kind of celebrations are those? The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine’s Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine’s Day on February’s shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed."

"Fire is the reuniting of matter with oxygen. If one bears that in mind, every blaze may be seen as a reunion, an occasion of chemical joy."

"For better or for worse, lots of kids these days have personal cell phones. Do you have a cell phone of your own? If so, is it one of those superphones, a genius phone that not only allows you to enjoy traditional audio telephone conversations, but sends text messages, takes photgraphs, checks e-mail, plays music, show movies, tells time, protects you from vampires, wipes your bottom, and pumps up the tires on your bicycle?"

"For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It's about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn't give a rat's ass."

"Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense."

"Gods and men create one another, destroy one another, though by different means."

"Good luck to you, pal. That's a search these days."

"Green is my favorite color, except for flesh."

"Grinned a sloppy Pernod grin."

"Grinned like a weasel running errands for the moon."

"Have you ever wondered why your daddy likes beer so much?"

"Hawaii made the mouth of her soul water."

"He looked at her with that kind of painted-on seriousness that comedians shift into when they get their chance to play Hamlet."

"He retired to a resting place less convenient to the wolve kitchens."

"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 equilibrium that he felt no fear. He was vast, he was many, he was dynamic, he was eternal."

"He whistled from stump to rock like he were a tea kettle leading the way in the annual pot and pan cross-country marathon."

"Her surname resembled a line from an optometrist's examination chart."

"His disclosures would be woven into common gossip on the concubines looms."

"His eyes, bright as torches in an ice cave."

"Hold on to your divine blush, your innate rosy magic, or end up brown. Once you're brown, you'll find out you're blue. As blue as indigo. And you know what that means. Indigo. Indigoing. Indigone."

"How can one person be more real than any other? Well some people do hide and others seek. Maybe those who are hiding- escaping encounters, avoiding surprises, protecting their property, ignoring their fantasies, restricting their feelings, sitting out the Pan pipe hootchy-kootch of experience- maybe those people, people who won't talk to rednecks, or if they're rednecks won't talk to intellectuals, people who are afraid to get their shoes muddy or their noses wet, afraid to eat what they crave, afraid to drink Mexican water, afraid to bet a long shot to win, afraid to hitchhike, jaywalk, honky-tonk, cogitate, osculate, levitate, rock it, bop it, sock it, or bark at the moon, maybe such people are simply inauthentic, and maybe the jackleg humanist who says differently is due to have his tongue fried on the hot slabs of liars hell. Some folks hide and some folks seek, and seeking when its mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous, can be a form of hiding. But there are folks who want to know and aren't afraid to look, and won't turn tail should they find it-and if they never do, they'll have a good time anyway, because nothing, neither the terrible truth, nor the absence of it, is going to cheat them out of one honest breath of earth's sweet gas."

"How many writers of fiction do you think are committed to that?"

"How then does soul differ from spirit?’ You’re probably asking yourself, although he must have been reasonably sure nobody was. Well, soul is darker of color, denser of volume, saltier of flavor, rougher of texture, and tends to be more maternalistic than paternalistic: soul is connected to Mother Earth, just as spirit is connected to Father Sky."

"Human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another."

"Human folly does not impede the turning of the stars."

"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature."

"Humanity is generally offensive, he told her happily. Life's an offensive proposition from beginning to end. Maybe those who can't tolerate offense ought to just go ahead and end it all, and maybe those who demand financial compensation for offense ought to have it ended for them."

"I am looking for the novelists whose writing is an extension of their intellect rather than an extension of their neurosis."

"I believe in everything; nothing is sacred, I believe in nothing; everything is sacred, …Ha Ha Ho Ho Hee Hee."

"I believe in nothing, everything is sacred. I believe in everything, nothing is sacred."