The voodoo priest and all his powders were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself.
They’re not just dreams. Not anymore, I dream more than I wake now, and, at times, I have crossed over. Can’t you see? I’ve been there.
Justice came from a fight amid complexities, and required all the virtues in the world merely to be perceived.
And they’ll vote for me because I’m the best liar, because I do it honestly, with a certain finesse. They know that lies and truth are very close, and that something beautiful rests between.
If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined.
Not surprisingly, he began to sing, and because no one in the world could hear him, and he sang without inhibition, he sang well.
I have to confess that I have so rarely experienced triumph that I cannot claim to know it well enough to judge, but it seems to be at best a momentary joy followed instantly by sadness, and, then, of necessity, by wariness.
Not born to be rich, by 1981 I had nonetheless begun to use a PC that required for its operation the absorption of several hundred pages of protocols and the placement of very large floppy disks in the freezer to fix frequent crashes.
From long familiarity, we know what honor is. It is what enables the individual to do right in the face of complacency and cowardice. It is what enables the soldier to die alone, the political prisoner to resist, the singer to sing her song, hardly appreciated, on a side street.
I saw how greatly he suffered the requirement of being clever. It separated him from his soul, and it didn’t get him anything other than a living.
No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile.
I’m sort of murdered for selling books. The idea is, if you make money your work can’t be literary.
Heavy blizzards start as a gentle and persistent snow.
My father ran London Films. He made films like ‘The Red Shoes,’ ‘The Third Man.’ And he had had a long career in the film business, which was bifurcated with a career in intelligence. He had to deal with gangsters, and sometimes he would take me with him. Also, I went to school with their children.
In daily life language is important, if not in itself, then as a symptom.
The treasures of the earth were movement, courage, laughter and love.
A tranquil city of good laws, fine architecture, and clean streets is like a classroom of obedient dullards, or a field of gelded bulls – whereas a city of anarchy is a city of promise.
The streets of New York and some wards of its venerable institutions were packed with people who, despite being entirely forsaken, had episodes of glory that made the career of Alexander the Great seem like a day in the life of a file clerk.
Accident is as much a part of fiction as anything else, symbolic of the grace that, along with will, conspires to put words on the page.
When you die, you know, you hear the insistent pounding that defines all things, whether of matter or energy, since there is nothing in the universe, really, but proportion.