Crete, Greece - 2006
1. “Actors die so loud.”
2. "After all, most writing is done away from the typewriter, away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet, silent moments, while you're walking or shaving or playing a game, or whatever, or even talking to someone you're not vitally interested in."
3. "All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience."
4. "All the lies and evasions by which man has nourished himself -- civilization, in a word is the fruits of the creative artist. It is the creative nature of man which has refused to let him lapse back into that unconscious unity with life which characterizes the animal world from which he made his escape."
5. "A man of good will with a little effort and belief in his own powers can enjoy a deep, tranquil, rich life -- provided he go his own way. He need not and should not think of making a good living, but rather of creating a good life for himself. To live one's own life is still the best way of life, always was, and always will be."
6. "A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in."
7. "Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness."
8. "And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is
human? Divine, in other words?"
9. “And who is the hero? Primarily one who has conquered his fears. One can be a hero in any realm; we never fail to recognize him when he appears. His singular virtue is that he has become one with life, one with himself. Having ceased to doubt and question, he quickens the flow and the rhythm of life. The coward, par contre, seeks to arrest life's flow. He arrests nothing, to be sure, unless it be himself. Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or as heros. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”
10. “A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but today it is caricature. Our world is a world of things. What we dread most, in the face of the impending debacle, is that we shall be obliged to give up our gewgaws, our gadgets, all the little comforts that have made us so uncomfortable. We are not peaceful souls; we are smug, timid, queasy and quaky.”
11. “Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.”
12. "Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself."
13. "Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life."
14. “A toujours.
Memory is the talisman of the sleepwalker on the floor of eternity.
If nothing is lost neither is anything gained.
There is only what endures. I AM.
That covers all experience, all wisdom, all truth.”
15. "Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur."
16. “Be always ecstatic. Be filled with a devine intoxication.”
17. "Chaos is the score upon which reality is written."
18. “Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, pessaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc.”
19. "Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood."
20. "Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music-the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."
21. ”Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.”
22. "Every genuine boy is a rebel and an anarch. If he were allowed to develop according to his own instincts, his own inclinations, society would undergo such a radical transformation as to make the adult revolutionary cower and cringe."
23. “Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.”
24. “Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.”
25. “Fame is an illusive thing -- here today, gone tomorrow. The fickle, shallow mob raises its heroes to the pinnacle of approval today and hurls them into oblivion tomorrow at the slightest whim; cheers today, hisses tomorrow; utter forgetfulness in a few months.”
26. "History is the myth, the true myth, of man's fall made manifest in time."
27. "Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire."
28. "Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It's a sort of spiritual clap, I should say."
29. "How different the new order would be if we could consult the veteran instead of the politician."
30. “I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it: we must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and soul. It may be that we are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us, but if that is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurdling howl, a screech of defiance, a war whoop! Away with lamentation! Away with elegies and dirges! Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and museums! Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance!”
31. "I didn't have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let's say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!"
32. “I don't want to be bitter about life - about love and friendship and all the human, emotional entanglements. I've had more than my share of human disappointments, deprivations, disillusionment. I want to love people and life above all; I want to be able to say always, "if you feel bitter or disillusioned, there is something wrong with yourself, not with people, not with life."
33. “I feel the world should be run by women. It would be the kind of a world - one world - I have often dreamed about.”
34. “If only I could believe in work. I hate work. Creation is not work - it's play. But who believes in that? I know it's true, but now it's one of those distant truths - as remote as the stars. It's treasonable even to think this way.”
35. ”If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.”
36. "If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having."
37. “If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.”
38. "I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth."
39. “I haven't the slightest fear about the future because I have learned how to live in the present.”
40. "Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything."
41. “In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.”
42. "Instead of asking -- ''How much damage will the work in question bring about?'' why not ask -- ''How much good? How much joy?''"
43. "In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor."
44. "In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest."
45. "It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir."
46. “It's silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons.”
47. “It is true I swim in a perpetual sea of sex, but the actual excursions are fairly limited.”
48. “Let each one turn his gaze inward and regard himself with awe and wonder, with mystery and reverence; let each one promulgate his own laws, his own theories; let each one work his own influence, his own havoc, his own miracles. Let each one as an individual, assume the roles of artist, healer, prophet, priest, king, warrior, saint.”
49. "Life is constantly providing us with new funds, new resources, even when we are reduced to immobility. In life's ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets."
50. "Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. "
51. "Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such."
52. "Living apart and at peace with myself, I came to realize more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain, even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with another's way of life - so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands off!"
53. "Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.
54. “Man does not recognize what a gem he has in woman and that through the experience of truly loving her, of giving himself up to her, he learns his greatest lesson in life.”
55. "Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything -- except his own nature."
56. “Man torturing man is a fiend beyond description. You turn a corner in the dark and there he is. You congeal into a bundle of inanimate fear. You become the very soul of anesthesia. But there is no escaping him. It is your turn now...”
57. "Men are not suffering from the lack of good literature, good art, good theatre, good music, but from that which has made it impossible for these to become manifest. In short, they are suffering from the silent shameful conspiracy (the more shameful since it is unacknowledged) which has bound them together as enemies of art and artists."
58. "Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines --these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm."
59. “Most of us imagine that we are travelling in a straight line, whereas the truth is that we are moving in circles. We change direction almost without thinking. Headed for Mexico, we land in China. (And like as not, without the slightest loss of face.) The ambitious ones set out to storm the world, only to end up like so many dead leaves scattered by the wind.”
60. “My books are the books that I am, the confused man, the negligent man, the reckless man, the lusty, obscene, boisterous, scrupulous, lying, diabolically truthful man that I am.”
61. “Nine-tenths of our sickness can be prevented by right thinking plus right hygiene -- nine-tenths of it!”
62. "No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance."
63. "No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe."
64. “No one asks you to throw Mozart out of the window. Keep Mozart. Cherish him. Keep Moses too, and Buddha and Lao tse and Christ. Keep them in your heart. But make room for the others, the coming ones, the ones who are already scratching on the window-panes.”
65. “Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk.”
66. "One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life."
67. "One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things."
68. "One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one."
69. "Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense."
70. "Reality is not protected or defended by laws, proclamations, ukases, cannons and armadas. Reality is that which is sprouting all the time out of death and disintegration."
71. "Remorse is impotence, it will sin again. Only repentance is strong, it can end everything."
72. "Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation.The other eight are unimportant".
73. "Sin, guilt, neurosis --they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge."
74. “. . . that's the only death, that's the real death. Not this death when you depart the body, but being dead while you are alive, that's the real death.”
75. "The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware."
76. ”The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.”
77. "The bulk of my readers, I have often observed, fall into two distinct groups: in the one group those who claim to be repelled or disgusted by the liberal dosage of sex, and in the other those who are delighted to find that this element form such a large ingredient."
78. “The crisis through which we are going . . . is rooted in the fact that we all hold beliefs contrary to our behavior.”
79. "The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist an escapist, the man of vision a criminal."
80. "The earth is a Paradise, the only one we will ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don't have to make it a Paradise -- it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it."
81. “The gulf between knowledge and truth is infinite. Parents talk a lot about truth but seldom bother to deal in it. It's much simpler to dispense ready-made knowledge. More expedient too, for truth demands patience, endless, endless patience. The happiest expedient of all is to bundle kids off to school just as soon as they can stand the strain. There they not only get "learning," which is a crude substitute for knowledge, but discipline.”
82. "The important thing I learned from making watercolours, was not to worry, not to care too much. We don't have to turn out a masterpiece everyday. To paint is the thing, not to make masterpieces."
83. “The land and the water make numbers joined, a poem written with flesh and stronger than steel or granite. Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown.”
84. "The life of a creator is not the only life nor perhaps the most interesting which a man leads. There is a time for play and a time for work, a time for creation and a time for lying fallow. And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean -- when boredom seems the very stuff of life."
85. "The loss of sex polarity is part and parcel of the larger disintegration, the reflex of the soul's death, and coincident with the disappearance of great men, great deeds, great causes, great wars, etc."
86. ”The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to ahve artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.”
87. “The mission of man on earth is to remember...
To remember, to forget, to decide which it shall be.
We have no choice, we remember everything.
But to forget in order to better remember, ah!
The mission of man on earth is to remember.
To remember to remember.
To taste everything in eternity as once in time.
All happens only once, but that is forever.”
88. “The moment one is on the side of life, "peace and security" drop out of consciousness. The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.”
89. "The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."
90. “The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is, different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.”
91. “The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.”
92. “The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.”
93. “The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.”
94. "The real enemy can always be met and conquered, or won over. Real antagonism is based on love, a love which has not recognized itself."
95. "There are lone figures armed only with ideas, sometimes with just one idea, who blast away whole epochs in which we are enwrapped like mummies. Some are powerful enough to resurrect the dead. Some steal on us unawares and put a spell over us which it takes centuries to throw off. Some put a curse on us, for our stupidity and inertia, and then it seems as if God himself were unable to lift it."
96. “The real leader has no need to lead -- he is content to point the way.”
97. “There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him.”
98. "There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him."
99. "There is the happiness which comes from creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, whether in painting a picture, writing an epic, singing a song, composing a symphony, devising new invention, creating a vast industry."
100. "The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you."
101. "The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it."
102. "The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order."
103. “The world isn't kept running because it's a paying proposition. (God doesn't make a cent on the deal.) The world goes on because a few men in every generation believe in it utterly, accept it unquestioningly; they underwrite it with their lives.”
104. "The world is the mirror of myself dying."
105. "The world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection, of the consciousness of failure."
106. "This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing."
107. “Until it is kindled by a spirit as lovingly alive as the one which gave it birth, a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.”
108. "Until we lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves."
109. “Voyages are accomplished inwardly, and the most hazardous ones, needless to say, are made without moving from the spot.”
110. "We are all guilty of crime the great crime of not living life to the full.
But we are all potentially free.
We can stop thinking of what we have failed to do and do whatever lies within our power.
What those powers that are in us may be no one has truly dared to imagine.
That they are infinite we will realize the day we admit to ourselves that imagination is everything.
Imagination is the voice of daring.”
111. “We are all part of things,
We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians,
We have only to open up, to discover what is already there.”
112. “We cling to memory in order to preserve an identify which, if we but realized it, can never be lost. When we discover this truth, which is an act of remembrance, we forget everything else.”
113. "We do not talk -- we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests."
114. "We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way."
115. "We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets -- we remember only.
116. ”We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.”
117. “What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.”
118. "Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring, through obeying the blind urge."
119. “Whatever I do I do first for enjoyment.”
120. "Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed."
121. "What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature."
122. "What these powers that are in us may be no one has truly dared to imagine. That they are infinite we will realize the day we admit to ourselves that imagination is everything. Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything God-like about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything."
123. “What we all hope in reaching for a book, is to meet a man of our own heart, to experience tragedies and delights which we ourselves lack the courage to invite, to dream dreams which will render life more hallucinating, perhaps also to discover a philosophy of life which will make us more adequate in meeting the trials and ordeals which beset us. To merely add to our store of knowledge or improve our culture, whatever that may mean, seems worthless to me.”
124. "What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion. We may succeed in altering the face of the earth until it is unrecognizable even to the Creator, but if we are unaffected wherein lies the meaning?"
125. “Whenever a taboo is broken, something good happens, something vitalizing. Taboos after all are only hangovers, the product of diseased minds, you might say, of fearsome people who hadn't the courage to live and who under the guise of morality and religion have imposed these things upon us.”
126. “When I say friends, I mean friends. Not anybody and everybody can be your friend. It must be someone as close to you as your skin, someone who imparts color, drama, meaning to your life, however snug and secure it may be.”
127. “When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.”
128. “When you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous.”
129. “Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist.”
130. "Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves."
131. “Yes, and always. Always yes. Am here, was gone, and always, yes always, same man, same spot, same hour, same everything.”
