Oh Doris Lessing, my dear -- your Anna is wrong about orgasms. They are no proof of love -- any more than that other Anna's fall under the wheels of that Russian train was a proof of love. It's all female shenanigans, cultural mishegoss, conditioning, brainwashing, male mythologizing. What does a woman want? She wants what she has been told she ought to want. Anna Wulf wants orgasm, Anna Karenina, death. Orgasm is no proof of anything. Orgasm is proof of orgasm. Someday every woman will have orgasms -- like every family has color TV -- and we can all get on with the real business of life.

Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings.

Bible

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am. Everything that was literature has fallen from me. There are no more books to be written, thank God. This then? This is not a book. This is libel, slander, and defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants of God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty

Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (

Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.

Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be?,

Revolution did not necessarily involve sanguinary strife. It was not a cult of bomb and pistol. They may sometimes be mere means for its achievement.

Bhagat Singh

Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.

William Hazlitt

The first and best victory is to conquer self; to be conquered by self is of all things most shameful and vile.

Plato

Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want to impress people they don't like.

Will Smith

A great artist is a great man in a great child.

Victor Hugo

It is easier for a tutor to command than to teach.

John Locke

An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.

Benjamin Disraeli

I think marriage is ghastly.

Rupert Everett

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

Martin Luther King, Jr.