I have actually found myself buying up more and more old analogue gear. I have this strange obsession with old drum machines.
This is what I learned: that everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.
Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.
We should all know this: that listening is not talking; [it] is the gifted and great role and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective, and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don't, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one.
But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi--like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that ever was on earth--do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them. "Be not anxious for the morrow," and "which of you being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?" So they dare to be idle, i. e. not to be pressed and duty-driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good.
. . . writing is not a performance but a generosity.
When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.
Books are true levelers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race.
The thing about 'Soft Machine' and me was that I never considered another profession.
As soon as I came to believe there was a God, I understood that I could not do otherwise than live only for him.
The sum of the crowd's IQ was far below that of its most modest single member. Mobs have passions, not brains.