Lgbt People

"Any movie about cult figure Charles Manson needs lots of sex, drugs and blood. But as John Roecker discovered while filming his first feature -- screening Friday and Saturday only at the Avalon -- the key to amping up the gore is an old standby: puppets."

"Roecker seems to have been as inspired by Todd Haynes's legendary underground film "Superstar" -- in which he told Karen Carpenter's life story with surprising tenderness using Barbie dolls and a bootlegged soundtrack -- as by the stop-motion animation of Ray Harryhausen and the "Frosty the Snowman" cartoon."

"Live Freaky! Die Freaky! will be, without a shadow of a doubt, the single greatest film of all time about Charles Manson being the savior to all humanity in the year 3069."

"Writer-director John Roecker's debut, Live Freaky! Die Freaky! will have you convulsing on the floor … with nausea, laughter, or both."

"When they told me they were gonna call the record American Idiot, I was the one who was saying, 'Oh no, you can't.' I was the one who was worried about it. Because when you think about it, we know the song now, but then it was a really fucking bold thing to do."

"It's the most obscene film I've ever seen."

"Roecker sure is a romantic about certain things, like art and music, though you might not know it from watching Live Freaky! Die Freaky!, his claymation musical retelling of the Helter Skelter Charlie Manson saga."

"Manson's the man who's responsible for "killing the Sixties." He really knew how to play up the whole "most dangerous man alive" thing when at the time, the most dangerous man alive was Richard Nixon."

"I wanted to push the envelope, and I wanted to go so far as to actually offend both the liberals and the right. I think I have succeeded."

"A lot of the times with porn, it's instant fame. The only thing I can compare it to is being a child actor. You get it fast, then there's a shelf-life for it. With mainstream films, you've got to go to acting classes, you've really got to hustle, there's so much competition, but with these [porn] guys, if you're good-looking with a great body, you're in like Flynn."

"I wanted to look at how people deal with death … Why is Henry Kissinger not in jail and Charles Manson is?"

"Everything that is good in the arts is done by some sort of diversion."

"When I saw The Passion of the Christ it made me feel better about what I was doing. And I thought, No way is that fucker going to outdo me! I demanded more blood."

"I just don't think religion should be a money making organization. There is never a need to send churches or cults money for any reason. If you want to feel good about yourself or make your God happy, give your money directly to a charity or a homeless person. But once again this is my opinion, and I don't want to be in a position of also dictating."

"It is hard to explain to people now how hard it was being a punk back then [the 1970s]. If you had short hair, didn't wear bell bottoms and walked down the street, chances are some asshole in an El Camino was going to kick your ass."

"Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends."

"As to abuse, I thrive on it. Abuse, hearty abuse, is a tonic to all save men of indifferent health."

"To find a friend one must close one eye. To keep him—two."

"You can tell the values of a nation by its advertisements."

"Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy."

"Broad was a wonderfully idiosyncratic lecturer. He always appeared with a carefully prepared script, and he read every sentence twice, except for the jokes, which he read three times. Although he spoke drearily, his content was compelling, jargon-free and spiked with witty references to Charles Dickens, Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde and other literary figures."

"Although people cannot define existence and do use the term with some looseness, yet it is possible to give an extensive definition by pointing to the sorts of things that everyone believes to exist. It is still easier to point to the sort of entities that people agree in believing not to exist, and happily, this is really what concerns us most. People mean by saying that causation only applies to things that exist that it applies, if at all, to what can change; and they believe that, if anything can change, it is things like chairs and tables and minds, and not those like the propositions of Euclid and the multiplication table. What would be agreed then is that, if causal laws apply to anything it is to what can change in so far as it changes."

"Reflecting on my experience, I find myself agreeing with the eminent Cambridge philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad, “that we should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been inclined to do the type of theory which Bergson put forward in connection with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.”"

"There certainly are changes of fashion in philosophy. When a new kind is in vogue, many things in the philosophy of an earlier day, which are of permanent value and perhaps highly relevant to contemporary problems, tend to be altogether forgotten or carelessly and ignorantly dismissed, simply because they occur in an out-of-date setting and are clad in an unfashionable dress. It is now quite certain that much of permanent value in Scholastic philosophy was ignored or contemned from this cause by Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and their followers. I have little doubt that the same is true mutatis mutandis of the attitude of many present-day philosophers towards the systems of monistic idealism which were fashionable at the beginning of this century. It is consoling to a philosopher's vanity not to pry too closely into the history of his subject, for otherwise he is liable to find that his discoveries have been anticipated and his fallacies refuted in advance by predecessors whom he has ignored or despised."

"It is true that our everyday view of the world is not quite naively realistic, but that is what it would like to be. Common-sense is naively realistic wherever it does not think that there is some positive reason why it should cease to be so. And this is so in the vast majority of its perceptions. When we see a tree we think that it is really green and really waving about in precisely the same way as it appears to be. We do not think of our object of perception being 'like' the real tree, we think that what we perceive is the tree, and that it is just the same at a given moment whether it be perceived or not, except that what we perceive may be only a part of the real tree."

"Take an eighteenth century English whig. Let him be a mystic. Endow him with the logical subtlety of the great schoolmen and their belief in the powers of human reason, with the business capacity of a successful lawyer, and with the lucidity of the best type of French mathematician. Inspire him (Heaven knows how) in his early youth with a passion for Hegel. Then subject him to the teaching of Sidgwick and the continual influence of Moore and Russell. Set him to expound Hegel. What will be the result? Hegel himself could not have answered this question a priori, but the course of world history has solved it ambulando by producing McTaggart."

"If Hegel be the inspired and too often incoherent prophet of the Absolute, if Bradley be its chivalrous knight, McTaggart is its devoted and extremely acute family solicitor."

"In the meanwhile I retire to my well-earned bath-chair, from which I shall watch with a fatherly eye the philosophic gambols of my younger friends as they dance to the highly syncopated pipings of Herr Wittgenstein's flute."

"It is to be feared that Spinoza would not have been enlightened enough to appreciate the beneficient system of the Ph.D. degree, introduced into English universities as a measure of post-war propaganda, whereby the time and energy of those who are qualified to do research are expended in supervising the work of those who never will be."

"[As Caliban in a production of Shakespeare's The Tempest Ralph Richardson was having difficulties in rehearsal] I couldn't find my feet very well and after a rehearsal, John said to me one day "Would you care to run over your scene with me?" so I thought to myself "Not much". So rather grudgingly I said "Oh yes, all right". So we ran through it, just the two of us in the theatre with the director and Johnny said "Well you know Ralph, I think that when you come on, you might do this or you might do that, you might do this" - he gave me, as he usually does, about three or four suggestions. I thought to myself My god, so I might, I might do one of those. And he talked about Sycorax my mother...he gave me about two hundred ideas as he usually does, twenty-five of which I eagerly seized on, and when I went away I thought "This chap, you know, I don't like him very much but by God he knows something about this here play." He helped me so much that I looked at him afterwards in quite a different way. And then out of that we formed a friendship.""

"John Gielgud didn't play Hamlet, he was Hamlet."

"There is no important problem in any branch of philosophy which is not treated by Kant, and he never treated a problem without saying something illuminating and original about it. He was certainly wrong on many points of detail, and he may well be wrong in his fundamental principles; but, when all criticisms have been made, it seems to me that Kant’s failures are more important than most men’s successes."

"I understand that it is the wish of the Editor of this collection of essays that each contributor should describe his own system of philosophy. Were I to interpret this demand literally I could not contribute anything at all, for two excellent reasons. In the first place, I have nothing worth calling a system of philosophy of my own, and there is no other philosopher of whom I should be willing to reckon myself a faithful follower. If this be a defect I see no likelihood of its ever being cured. Secondly, if I had a system of my own, I should doubt the propriety of "pushing" my crude philosophical wares in competition with the excellent products of older firms with well-earned reputations."

"I feel so sorry for those poor men sitting up there all day. They must be so cold."

"I'm sure there isn't an after-life. If there were, Ivor Novello would have got a message to us."

"Those who, like the present writer, never had the privilege of meeting Sidgwick can infer from his writings, and still more from the characteristic philosophic merits of such pupils of his as McTaggart and Moore, how acute and painstaking a thinker and how inspiring a teacher he must have been. Yet he has grave defects as a writer which have certainly detracted from his fame. His style is heavy and involved, and he seldom allowed that strong sense of humour, which is said to have made him a delightful conversationalist, to relieve the uniform dull dignity of his writing. He incessantly refines, qualifies, raises objections, answers them, and then finds further objections to the answers. Each of these objections, rebuttals, rejoinders, and surrejoinders is in itself admirable, and does infinite credit to the acuteness and candour of the author. But the reader is apt to become impatient; to lose the thread of the argument: and to rise from his desk finding that he has read a great deal with constant admiration and now remembers little or nothing. The result is that Sidgwick probably has far less influence at present than he ought to have, and less than many writers, such as Bradley, who were as superior to him in literary style as he was to them in ethical and philosophical acumen. Even a thoroughly second-rate thinker like T. H. Green, by diffusing a grateful and comforting aroma of ethical "uplift", has probably made far more undergraduates into prigs than Sidgwick will ever make into philosophers."

"“You founded the place. Why don’t you want to go?” “I don’t like children,” the duke replied. “Then why put out all that money to preserve them?” “Because it is wrong to let them die.”"

"“The trouble with you,” the Ugly Girl said, “is that you think you know just what everyone should do, don’t you?” The Mad Duke smiled at her. His face was bright and sharp, smooth and glittering. “Yes,” he said, “I do.” “And what,” she said, “if you’re wrong?” “And what,” he said, “if I’m not?”"

"“In real life, my sweet poet,” the duke said as the swordsmen circled, “words can never be undone.”"

"Honest change? Honest? Has someone altered the definition of the word while my back was turned, or have you recently developed a sense of humor?"

"“Tell me about the city, then.” The master shrugged. “It’s crowded. It smells. There are lots of things to buy.”"

"“I was afraid you wouldn’t take me seriously.” “I did. But I am preparing,” the duke said, “to revise that opinion. Stop playing and tell me what you want.” “And you’ll give it to me?” “What do you think? If it’s reasonable, I’ll consider it. If it’s not, I have the resources to annoy you very much as you’ve been annoying me. It’s true I have more scruples—but I’m willing to suspend them. I also have more money, you see—lots more money. I wasn’t planning to waste any of it on you, but I could be convinced to change my mind.”"

"He felt the almost sexual thrill of being the one in the room with all the power."

"“I heard it clearly, and so did everyone else, I’ll be bound. Your name, dear, not mine. I am very popular. You, it seems, are not.” “What a surprise.” He dropped petals on the floor. “And what a good thing I don’t care.” “How nice for you that you don’t have to.” “Meaning,” he drawled, “that you do.” “Just so.”"

"Is this politics? I suppose I am going to have to learn all about it, if I am to run Lord Ferris’s household, and throw parties and all. Now...explain to me again just who hates who, and why?"

"“Abjuring love? Real people don’t do that. Now you’re the one who sounds like someone on a stage. That’s not the real world. Real people follow their hearts, wherever it takes them. Real people refuse to be put into a little tiny box. You can say you love me or you don’t love me, it doesn’t matter; I know you have foresworn nothing except an existence you found intolerable.” She really did smile this time. “Now you’re making me sound like a heroine. Be honest, Lucius. For all that you go on about the real world with its real people, you don’t really want to live in it, either.”"

"In a city where most of the wealth is controlled by a small few, certain things are overlooked, particularly when it comes to the assertion of privilege."

"I’m the Duke of Riverside. I build things here and pretty much keep the peace, and discourage certain behaviors. If you think all that has been achieved through entirely civil and lawful means, you’ve had your head in a bucket."

"Our theories stand. We both see clearly; we know what’s right. Even if it’s not always possible to act on it, don’t you think it matters to be able to call things by their true names?"

"“I thought I would be safe here.” “You are.” For the first time, he touched her, touched her hand. “Safe from everything but paper and ink. Please. Put those down.” “Paper and ink.” She clutched the books to her ample chest. “They’re not nothing, Alec. They’re pretty much everything to me: the embodiment of ideas, of thought—of free and open thought. Of inquiry and supposition. All of it.”"