Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything. To "Why am I here?" To uselessness. It's the streami...ng reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars; then may we ho...pe to comprehend the infinitudes of man's soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian--even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been "gh...osted"Mor made to seem invisible--by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly--the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority--she can then be exorcised.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, yo...u were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and ...lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man's nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn't got the price of a televion set.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The weak are the most treacherous of us all. They come to the strong and drain them. They are bottomless. They are insatiable. The...y are always parched and always bitter. They are everyone's concern and like vampires they suck our life's blood.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The cities drain the country of the best part of its population: the flower of the youth, of both sexes, goes into the towns, and ...the country is cultivated by a so much inferior class. The land,--travel a whole day together,--looks poverty-stricken, and the buildings plain and poor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Animals used to provide a lowlife way to kill and get away with it, as they do still, but, more intriguingly, for some people they... are an aperture through which wounds drain. The scapegoat of olden times, driven off for the bystanders' sins, has become a tender thing, a running injury. There, running away ... is me: hurt it and you are hurting me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a youn...g mother hear you call dear baby "it."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »