There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order, method, and discipline.
So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.
An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
Find a pile of gold and sit on it.
Poor Grendel's had an accident. So may you all.
Our noblest hopes grow teeth and pursue us like tigers.
I couldn't go on, too conscious all at once of my whispering, my eternal posturing, always transforming the world with words--changing nothing.
Spoon the sauce over the ice cream. It will harden. This is what you have been working for.
Be content to seem what you really are.
I have the strangest time to get cast in anything. 'Ghost' was the same thing. Six months I had to wait for them to decide they had seen everybody possible. Why not? What limits me? I'm black? Oh, am I black?
I'd been in hairier situations than this one. Actually, it's sort of depressing, thinking how many times I'd been in them. But if experience had taught me anything, it was this: No matter how screwed up things are, they can get a whole lot worse.