He was a fresh-air fiend.
He’s so stupid it breaks your heart.
She washed her face with cold water, dried it with a towel from an overhead rack, applied fresh lipstick, combed her hair, and left the room.
In the first place, you’re way off when you start railing at things and people instead of at yourself. We both are. I do the same goddamn thing about television – I’m aware of that. But it’s wrong. It’s us. I keep telling you that.
She appeared to find it extraordinarily beautiful to listen to, rather as if it were the best possible substitute for the primordial silence itself. But she seemed to know, too, when to stop listening to it, as if all of what little or much wisdom there is in the world were suddenly hers.
All you have to have in the beginning is quantity. Then, later on, it becomes quality by itself.
Sir, we ought to teach the people that they are doing wrong in worshipping the images and pictures in the temple.’ Rama Krishna: ‘That’s the way with you Calcutta people. You want to teach and preach. You want to give millions when you are beggars yourselves. Do you think God does not know that He is being worshipped in the images and pictures? If a worshipper should make a mistake, do you not think God will know his intent?
There are times when I think you’ve forgiven S. more completely than any of us have. Waker once said something very interesting to me on that subject – in fact, I’m merely parroting what he said to me. He said you were the only one who was bitter about S.’s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving. That may be truer than true.
If anybody wanted to tell me something, they’d have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They’d get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I’d be through with having conversations for the rest of my life.
People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did, and he had very red hair.
I mean – she keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don’t. I can’t help it. You never know whether they really want you to stop, or whether they’re just scared as hell, or whether they’re just telling you to stop so that if you do go through with it, the blame’ll be on you, not them. Anyway, I keep stopping.
However innumerable beings are, I vow to save them; however inexhaustible the passions are, I vow to extinguish them; however immeasurable the Dharmas are, I vow to master them; however incomparable the Buddha-truth is, I vow to attain it.
The next part I don’t remember so hot. All I know is I got up from the bed, like I was going down to the can or something, and then I tried to sock him, with all my might, right smack in the toothbrush, so it would split his goddam throat open. Only, I missed. I didn’t connect.
I can just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs.
Suave as hell, boy.
First of all, he knows I don’t drink. Second, he knows I was born in New York and that if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s atmosphere. Third, he knows I live about seventy goddam blocks from the Village. And fourth, I told him three times I was in my pajamas and slippers.
I hope to hell that when I do die somebody has the sense to just dump me in the river or something.
It partly scared me and it partly fascinated me.
But I’d hate like hell to leave New York.
It may very well be that I hate like hell to play Martha to somebody else’s Mary.