I was asked to-night why I refuse to have truck with intellectuals after business hours. But of course I won't. 1. I am not an int...ellectual. Two minutes' talk with Aldous Huxley, William Glock, or any of the New Statesman crowd would expose me utterly. 2. I am too tired after my day's work to man the intellectual palisade. 3. When my work is finished I want to eat, drink, smoke, and relax. 4. I don't know very much, but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it. I know what I think about an actor or an actress, and am not interested in what anybody else thinks. My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that ...increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.... Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Face your own ambivalence about letting go and you will be better able to help you children cope with their own feelings. The insi...ght you gain through your own acceptance of change will bolster your confidence and make you a stronger college parent. The confidence you develop will be evident to your child, who will be able to move away from you without fear.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
South Africa used to seem so far away. Then it came home to me. It began to signify the meaning of white hatred here. That was wha...t the sheets and the suits and the ties covered up, not very well. That was what the cowardly guys calling me names from their speeding truck wanted to happen to me, to all of me: to my people. That was what would happen to me if I walked around the corner into the wrong neighborhood. That was Birmingham. That was Brooklyn. That was Reagan. That was the end of reason. South Africa was how I came to understand that I am not against war; I am against losing the war.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Being divorced is like being hit by a Mack truck. If you live through it, you start looking very carefully to the right and to the... left.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
America is like one of those old-fashioned six-cylinder truck engines that can be missing two sparkplugs and have a broken flywhee...l and have a crankshaft that's 5000 millimeters off fitting properly, and two bad ball-bearings, and still runs. We're in that kind of situation. We can have substantial parts of the population committing suicide, and still run and look fairly good.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An orange grown in Florida usually has a thin and tightly fitting skin, and it is also heavy with juice. Californians say that if ...you want to eat a Florida orange you have to get into a bathtub first. California oranges are light in weight and have thick skins that break easily and come off in hunks. The flesh inside is marvelously sweet, and the segments almost separate themselves. In Florida, it is said that you can run over a California orange with a ten-ton truck and not even wet the pavement.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They shoulda called me Little Cocaine, I was sniffing so much of the stuff! My nose got big enough to back a diesel truck in, unlo...ad it, and drive it right out again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...when we are going through the aftereffects of a bad jolt in loss of money or pride--and both are closely connected--we should g...et off to ourselves, make an honest appraisal of our shortcomings, and try to find our weak spots and bolster them up before starting in again. First on the program we should figure out a plan to eat. The money we have lost is a small matter; if we can keep our pride and strong faith in ourselves the battle ahead is half won before we start.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »