I believe in the Biblical documents supporting Jesus. But I have no illusions about them. I think they contain many flaws, scribal errors, and so forth and they are only partial or fragmentary.
Consequently, if you believe God made Satan, you must realize that all Satan’s power comes from God and so that Satan is simply God’s child, and that we are God’s children also. There are no children of Satan, really.
Go where the pain is, go where the pleasure is.
In the spring of 1988, I returned to New Orleans, and as soon as I smelled the air, I knew I was home. It was rich, almost sweet, like the scent of jasmine and roses around our old courtyard. I walked the streets, savoring that long lost perfume.
What I have always wanted more than revenge is to bring the other person to recognition of the pain they caused, so they essentially say, “I will never do that again.”
So we reach into the raging chaos, and we cling to it, and we tell ourselves it has meaning, and that the world is good, and we are not evil, and we will all go home in the end.
Then, are you master of us all? You didn’t teach her that. Was she supposed to imbibe it from my quiet subservience?
I have to move away from organized religion. The toxic confusion and anger I was feeling in church had become too great.
Don’t you see? I’m not the spirit of any age. I’m at odds with everything and always have been! I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time!
You make me miserable. You really do, I want you to know that. Much as I love you, much as I need you, much as I can’t exist without you, you make me miserable.
Because I show you my pain, I do not of necessity love you.
Our language needs endless synonyms for beautiful; the eyes could see what the tongue cannot possibly describe.
And so this young one, this young one whom I had so loved, I had to forsake, no matter how broken my heart, no matter how lonely my soul, no matter how bruised my intellect and spirit.
The supernatural world has always been more real to me than the real world.
I like to read things I’ve read before. It’s like listening over and over to your favorite song.
As for oblivion, well, we can wait a little while for that.
It is not man who is the enemy of the human species. It is the irrational; it is the spiritual when it is divorced from the material; from the lesson in one beating heart or one bleeding vein.
One tiny flame could make so many other flames; one tiny flame could set afire a whole world.
Don’t be a pawn in somebody’s game. Find the attitude which gives you the maximum strength and the maximum dignity, no matter what else is going on.
Oh, but when love is reached through suffering, it has a power it can never gain through innocence.