I don't spend too much time just kicking back.
Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one's situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are.
And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love. . . And you can never touch a girl in the same way more than once, twice, or another number of times however much you may wish to hold, wrap, or otherwise fix her hand, or look, or some other quality, or incident, known to you previously.
The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
The best way to live is by not knowing what will happen to you at the end of the day.
--Why are we fighting them? --They're mad. We're sane. --How do we know? --That we're sane? --Yes. --Am I sane? --To all appearances. --And you, do you consider yourself sane? --I do. --Well, there you have it. --But don't they also consider themselves sane? --I think they know. Deep down. That they're not sane. --How must that make them feel? --Terrible, I should think. They must fight ever more fiercely, in order to deny what they know to be true. That they are not sane.
Now, here is the point about the self: it is insatiable. It is always, always hankering. It is what you might call rapacious to a fault. The great flaming mouth to the thing is never in this world going to be stuff full.
I have not had time to reflect on my own truths in many years.
I don't have any kind of ideology that precludes me from moving in one direction or another. I just want creative autonomy and I want at least an opportunity that it's going to be seen.
Then, much later, my next dream was to become an astronaut, and I was fortunate to realize that dream, also.
How do they manage to go on living?. . . . . By loving life. And-in spite of everything-by loving God. By having enough faith to start over again and again; enough faith to risk having our hearts break all over again. That's the true meaning of faith. It's the deepest kind of heroism.