Despite popular opinion, there are no important parallels between Madonna and Monroe, who was a virtuoso comedienne but who was in...secure, depressive, passive-aggressive, and infuriatingly obstructionist in her career habits. Madonna is manic, perfectionist, workaholic. Monroe abused alcohol and drugs, while Madonna shuns them. Monroe had a tentative, melting, dreamy solipsism; Madonna has Judy Holliday's wisecracking smart mouth and Joan Crawford's steel will and bossy, circusmaster managerial competence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thou wouldst be great; Art not without ambition, but without... The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false, And yet wouldst wrongly win.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the ...well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No further evidence is needed to show that "mental illness" is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be el...ucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
With the truth, you need to get rid of it as soon as possible and pass it on to someone else. As with illness, this is the only wa...y to be cured of it. The person who keeps truth in his hands has lost.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not possible, for a poet, writing in any language, to protect himself from the tragic elements in human life.... [ellipsis i...n source] Illness, old age, and death--subjects as ancient as humanity--these are the subjects that the poet must speak of very nearly from the first moment that he begins to speak.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »