What people who don’t write don’t understand is that they think you make up the line consciously – but you don’t. It proceeds from your unconscious. So it’s the same surprise to you when it emerges as it is to the audience when the comic says it. I don’t think of the joke and then say it. I say it and then realize what I’ve said. And I laugh at it, because I’m hearing it for the first time myself.
I just didn’t grasp the finer points and once tipped a process server who knocked on my door and handed me a summons.
He opened my eyes to just how great S. J. Perelman was, superior to all other funny minds, an axiom I hold to this day.
And I definitely do not want to be on one of those first rockets to outer space, to glimpse Earth from afar and experience weightlessness. The truth is, I hate weightlessness; I am a big fan of gravity and hope it lasts.
But the arguments we had over free will and monads, while heated, were never as combatative as the ones we had over our marriage. I knew I was in trouble when, in one philosophical discussion, Harlene proved I didn’t exist.
I must say, it amazed me how many in my profession caved in like dominoes.
It seemed like I was surrounded by great and wonderful people unstable as uranium.
I was crushed when Mia’s plan worked, and the judge shilled for her to make sure I would not get to see Dylan.
One of the saddest things of my life was that I was deprived of the years of raising Dylan and could only dream about showing her Manhattan and the joys of Paris and Rome.
I had no sense of direction. Once, driving on the Sunrise Highway, Harlene said her parents were away and we could go to her house and use the bedroom. Inflamed by the idea, I made a quick U-turn and knocked over a telephone pole.
But as I would later learn, Soon-Yi was not just a diamond in the rough but round cut and flawless.
To a human, the fall-colored leaves are gorgeous. To a red or yellow leaf, I can guarantee they find the green ones lovelier.
In the end this obsession for conformity leads to fascism.
In retrospect, the red flags existed every few feet, but nature provides us with a denial mechanism, else we couldn’t make it through the days, as Freud teaches us, as Nietzsche teaches us, as O’Neill teaches us, as T. S. Eliot teaches us. Unfortunately, I was never a good student.
Little did I know – once smeared, always vulnerable.
Like Bertrand Russell, I feel a great sadness for the human race. Unlike Bertrand Russell, I can’t do long division.
A world I will never feel comfortable in, never understand, and never approve of or forgive.
I always took to anything that required solitude... it kept me from having to deal with other humans who, for no explainable reason, I didn’t like nor trust.
I met Tati, who advised me to save my money lest I wind up in the old actor’s home, where he had just come from visiting a friend.
We are adrift alone in the cosmos wreaking monstrous violence on one another out of frustration and pain.