Words to Try On, Wear Out, Grow With and Live By

How do I know what I think until I see what I say? - E.M. Forster (echoed)

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. - Thomas Mann

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. - Simone Weil

Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are. - José Ortega y Gasset

Who is Lain? - Navi

I listened for an echo and heard nothing but praise. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Language or “the word” tyrannizes hardest over us, because it brings up against us a whole army of fixed ideas. - Max Stirner

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free. - Baruch Spinoza

To communicate is natural; to accept what is communicated is an acquired art. - Goethe

And there’s a man with his chin in his hand, who knows more than he’ll ever understand. - Sixto Rodriguez

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. - Flannery O’Connor

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair

I have always liked people who can’t adapt themselves to life pragmatically. - Andrei Tarkovsky

Find what you love and let it kill you. - Charles Bukowski

Hobbies cost money, interests are free. - George Carlin

I’m a bird. - Mischief

Flirtation, n. A game in which you do not want the other player’s stake but stand to lose your own. - Ambrose Bierce

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. - H.L. Mencken

It forgets that God’s possessions belong to Jesus Christ, and in him to our neighbor, the one who is deprived of what we own. - Mlle. Moussat

I love my country too much to be a nationalist. - Albert Camus (echoed)

I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. - James Baldwin

The cult of personal relations, which becomes increasingly intense as the hope of political solutions recedes, conceals a thoroughgoing disenchantment with personal relations, just as the cult of sensuality implies a repudiation of sensuality in all but its most primitive forms. The ideology of personal growth, superficially optimistic, radiates a profound despair and resignation. It is the faith of those without faith. - Christopher Lasch

The belief in collective moral advancement ignores the inherent flaws in human nature as well as the tragic reality of human history. Whether it comes in secular or religious form, this belief is magical thinking. The secular version of this myth peddles fables no less fantastic, and no less delusional, than those preached from church pulpits. The battle under way in America is not a battle between religion and science; it is a battle between religious and secular fundamentalists. - Chris Hedges

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

But nothing is crueler than a coward, and the slaughter to come is probably beyond our imagining. - Cormac McCarthy

Speak in extremes, it’ll save you time. - David Bowie

Fire is the only constant. - Heraclitus (Fragments, recast)

But it’s not your horse that’s dead. - Darl

Whatcha readin’ for? - Bill Hicks