The World Motivation
What I mean to say is, we had been
“I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love, and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly unlikable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.”
“Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.”
“In art, and maybe just in general, the idea is to be able to be really comfortable with contradictory ideas. In other words, wisdom might be, seem to be, two contradictory ideas both expressed at their highest level and just let to sit in the same cage sort of, vibrating. So, I think as a writer, I'm really never sure of what I really believe.”
“My people!" he shouted in the stentorian voice. "I shall speak now of us! Who are we? We are an articulate people, yet a people of few words. We feel deeply, yet refrain from embarrassing displays of emotion. Though firm, we are never too firm, though we love fun, we never have fun in a silly way that makes us appear ridiculous, unless that is our intent. Our national coloration, though varied, is consistent. Everything about us is as it should be, for example, we can be excessive when excess is called for, and yet, even in our excess, we show good taste, although never is our taste so super-refined as to seem precious. Even the extent to which we are moderate is moderate, except when we have decided to be immoderately moderate, or even shockingly flamboyant, at which time our flamboyance is truly breathtaking in a really startling way, and when we decide to make mistakes, our mistakes are as big and grand and irrevocable as any nation's colossal errors, and when we decide to deny our mistakes, we sound just as if we are telling the truth, and when we decide to admit our errors, we do so in a way that is truly moving in its extreme frankness! Am I making sense? Am I saying this well?”
“We see a hearse; we think sorrow. We see a grave; we think despair. We hear of a death; we think of a loss. Not so in heaven. When heaven sees a breathless body, it sees the vacated cocoon & the liberated butterfly.”
“It's natural to die," he said again. "The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don't see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we're human we're something above nature.”
“We may like to combat disease or even want to cure death. We may try to surf on the waves of infinity and attempt to kill mortality. Nobody, though, ever recovers from the lethal illness. In the meantime, we’d better unlock temporal moments that deliver touches of eternity. They, for sure, never disappoint. (" Living on probation")”
“I love you Anna Covey,' he said, his voice barely audible. And slowly, clumsily, he leant forward, and his lips found hers, and Anna felt him kiss her awkwardly, she knew that she wasn't a Surplus any more. And nor was Peter.”
“I kept thinking how they were all names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing dead people keep.”
“So, instead of the story being this messed-up thing I erroneously produced, because I don’t know how to do it right—instead of it existing as a sort of Proof of Failure, with me as Chief Failer—I see myself as a loyal, helpful friend to that guy over there, who is my talent, and I have faith in him, although he sometimes gets a little confused. And I’m trying to help him to do his best. He empties his pockets on to the table and some of what he puts there is good, and some of it is… “not quite there yet.” I step up to the table, put my hand on his back, and the feeling I’m trying to convey is, “What’ve we got here? Let’s see what we can do. It’s going to be all right.”
“I’ll tell you something else about which I’ve been lately thinking!” he bellowed in a suddenly stentorian voice. “I've been thinking about our beautiful country! Who gave it to us? I’ve been thinking about how God the Almighty gave us this beautiful sprawling land as a reward for how wonderful we are. We’re big, we’re energetic, we’re generous, which is reflected in all our myths, which are so very populated with large high-energy folks who give away all they have! If we have a National Virtue, it is that we are generous, if we have a National Defect, it is that we are”
“Nothing dies in Hell.”