authors-from-california

"One of my head pizzaiolos, Laura Meyer, has lived and studied in Italy and speaks fluently. So when the world championships in , Italy, rolled around, she was excited to give it a shot. We flew over together and planned her entry in the pizza in teglia ("," or what we would call ) division. I advised her not to go too off the wall—Italians don't love that, especially from Americans—but to add a little twist that would be just creative enough. Laura settled on a classic pizza alla diavola, which is made with whole milk , , and slices of the spicy oblong known as soppressata picante. Her clever addition was a scattering of on top of the finished pizza. Tasting the mildness of the Italian mozzarella, she decided to blend in a bit of ' for extra flavor. And because we were in Parma, she finished her creation with shavings of , and some for good measure. ... In addition to a title she will hold all her life, she won a , a of , and a five-kilo block of Parmesan cheese, which she hand-carried all the way back home. ..."

"Born and raised in , Mr. Gemignani started making at age 15 in his brother’s pizza shop in When Mr. Gemignani encountered his first on a visit to the city 20 years ago, he was a changed man. “In California, pizza was just that, pizza. But when I started traveling and visiting places like New York, you understand pizza in a totally different and beautiful way,” he said. I felt that there would be a renaissance in the slice business coming,” Mr. Gemignani said. He opened the acclaimed in the in 2009. Shortly after, he realized that the New York slice was just as deserving of respect as the sanctified whole and s that most pizza nerds lauded. So the following year he opened the first Slice House next door — where the pizza boxes read, “Respect the Craft!” in big, bright red letters."

"Every single one of us in this room, we'd be prepared to kill if need be, we would be prepared to die for what we believe in. But what scares the people out there a thousand times more is that we’re prepared to live for what we believe in."

"When all is said and done, I have no great quarrel with being labelled a "fascist". While it is not the whole story, it implies (to me) a sort of Marquis De Sade worldview that sees life in terms of master and slave, strong and weak, predator and prey. I know such views are highly unfashionable, but to me they seem fairly consistent with what I've seen to be true."

"We don’t believe in a master race... We think there are strong people who do what they want to do, and there are other people who just follow along. Race is an issue, but I don’t think you can have a master race, because every race has a handful of people who are really intelligent, who are achievers, and a bunch of people who are what Lenin called "stuffing in the mattress"."

"The coasts are doomed, they're death traps. The cities are like malignant cancers, completely dysfunctional. They're llike previews of the Apocalypse. You know how deadly diseases have symptoms - ugly sores that sprout up that sort of signify a deeper problem. That's how I view cities. If America has the cultural equivalent of A.I.D.S., the major cities are analogous to Kaposis Sarcoma. If you want to see life in dysfunction, go to S.F. or L.A. or N.Y."

"[Charles Manson is] the perfect embodiment of Odinism as a way of life, a Hitlerian ideal! I find it difficult to breathe within the confines of more mainstream National Socialism which seems to be made up of people who lack any inner vision & are still thinking in terms as small as those who they oppose."

"I feel that I'm a fascist, but 'Nazi' is a real specific term... I'm a fascist in the sense of the modern bastardized meaning of the word. I'm completely against democratic values and liberalism. I think that they have very little to do with life on Earth. I think they're an ideological abstraction."

"Social Darwinism is simply the idea that the Darwinian concept of "survival of the fittest" applies to man. It's the idea that within a culture, superior individuals will rise to the top, and inferior individuals will sink to the bottom, as a part of natural selection. It isn't related to fascism, Nazism, or racism—it's just the way of the world."

"I think AIDS is probably the best thing that's happened to Africa. I mean, just imagine; this is a place with so much population that the land can’t support it, and they can’t feed themselves, and they're starving to death—to me it seems that something like AIDS would be a godsend... think it would be great if that place were just turned into a big animal preserve—what about the animals? Fuck the human beings! Let them all slaughter each other with machetes, let them die of AIDS, let that entire continent turn back into a wild kingdom again."

"A Satanic world is a world reborn in purity, a world where the instinct and the intellect will be complementary to one another rather than being at odds with one another. It will be a world in which we follow laws of nature instead of just the rules that man has made up to regulate his conduct. It will be a world in which masters will be masters and slaves will be slaves, and never the twain shall meet."

"We mourn not its victims, we honor its victors... I would remind those here that murder is the predator's prerogative, and there is no birth without blood."

"Emotional Intelligence' refers to the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships. It describes abilities distinct from, but complementary to, academic intelligence, the purely cognitive capacities measured by IQ."

"Every businessperson knows a story about a highly intelligent, highly skilled executive who was promoted into a leadership position only to fail at the job. And they also know a story about someone with solid—but not extraordinary—intellectual abilities and technical skills who was promoted into a similar position and then soared. Such anecdotes support the widespread belief that identifying individuals with the “right stuff” to be leaders is more art than science. After all, the personal styles of superb leaders vary: Some leaders are subdued and analytical; others shout their manifestos from the mountaintops. And just as important, different situations call for different types of leadership. Most mergers need a sensitive negotiator at the helm, whereas many turnarounds require a more forceful authority."

"If your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far."

"Goleman deserves credit for systematically testing the Indian systems using the scientific method and establishing their credibility. But this need not erase the source tradition in the process. When knowledge is appropriated from ancient Greece, for instance, it is duly acknowledged as such, and the same standard must apply in the case of Indian knowledge. Such acknowledgment keeps the knowledge system alive in its native form so it can enrich us further."

"Effective leaders are alike in one crucial way: They all have a high degree of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence. It’s not that IQ and technical skills are irrelevant. They do matter, but mainly as “threshold capabilities”; that is, they are the entry-level requirements for executive positions. But my research, along with other recent studies, clearly shows that emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of leadership."

"There are many leaders, not just one. Leadership is distributed. It resides not solely in the individual at the top, but in every person at every level who, in one way or another, acts as a leader to a group of followers — wherever in the organization that person is, whether shop steward, team head, or CEO."

"… a psychological system (was) at the heart of Buddhism … absolutely unknown in Western psychology. … I started to write about it, and the way it worked with the mind, the way it conceived of what you could do to transform the mind, … meditation was very much at the heart of that. … Western psychology did not understand that … meditation did transform the mind, and now we know, the brain. No one had ever heard of the word, neuroplasticity in the 1970s, … repeated experiences change the structure and function of the brain was implicit in Buddhist psychology and unknown in Western psychology. … you could transform the mind, to the point where, … your inner emotional state was not at the whim of external conditions, but was an ongoing, …equanimous state that was one of kindness. This was inconceivable. … I would say psychologists in the 2010s don’t think about it that much as whole."

"transcendental meditation (sic) as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is the one I’ve practiced longest, am most thoroughly familiar with theoretically, and about which I hypothesize here. Transcendental meditation (sic), or TM, like most yoga systems taught in the US, traces its roots back to the tradition of which Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is the classic statement."

"‘My hypotheses are generated from experience with TM but are framed in terms of meditation in general in the hope that they will be tested on a variety of different systems’."

"… I discovered … an alternate psychological system. … Abhidharma, which is the Sanskrit term for this model of mind. Then I started writing about it in psychology journals, albeit very obscure psychology journals, because they were the only ones that were interested. … it was important to bring this news to Western psychology because … it …extend(ed) the horizon line of the potential of being human. … if psychology’s about anything, it’s about the mind and what are it’s (sic) upper limits; what are the worst places we can go, what are the best places we can go? And this described some best places that we hadn’t heard of yet…"

"IQ is a genetic given that cannot be changed by life experience, and that our destiny in life is largely fixed by these aptitudes."

"In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels. These two fundamentally different ways of knowing interact to construct our mental life."

"People who are emotionally adapt — who know and manage their feelings well, and who read and deal effectively with other people's feelings — are at an advantage in any domain in life, whether in romance and intimate relationships or picking up the unspoken rules that govern success in organizational politics."

"There is an old-fashioned word for the body of skills that emotional intelligence represents: character."

"Feelings are self-justifying, with a set of perceptions and "proofs" all their own."

"Our emotional intelligence determines our potential for learning the practical skills that are based on its five elements: self-awareness, motivation, self-regulation, empathy, and adeptness in relationships"

"That's conversation. I charge six bucks an hour for that."

"This job offers broad opportunity for travel—around and around and around the block. And to think—some girls settle for Europe."

""Life" in this "society" being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of "society" being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex."

"the shooting of Andy Warhol had a political dimension, at least in Valerie Solanas's mind. A couple of Warhol's obituaries solemnly refer to Solanas as a member of a group called S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men). Actually, so far as I know, the sole member of this "group" was Solanas herself. Whether she envisioned killing Warhol as a S.C.U.M. project I have no idea; she did, however, write The S.C.UM. Manifesto, a supremely tasteless and wonderfully zany parody of male supremacist thought, which argued that biologically men were not only inferior but superfluous. I never read it as anything but satire, but later I noticed that there were feminists who took it seriously and either loved it or were indignant. I can't believe Solanas meant it seriously, but then again how would I know?"

"During its bohemian heyday, scores of artists and writers stayed at the , built in 1900 and beloved for its prime location and cheap rates. drafted “” and “” there, and when she shot , the radical feminist writer Valerie Solanas called the Marlton home."

"It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction."

"The male is a biological accident: the y(male) gene is an incomplete x(female) gene, that is, has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion.... To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples."

"The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection or tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming."

"He ["the male"] is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse off than apes, because he is, first of all, capable of a large array of negative feelings that the apes aren't - hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, disgrace, doubt - and, secondly, he is aware of what he is and isn't."

"To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he's a machine, a walking dildo. It's often said that men use women. Use them for what? Surely not pleasure."

"Eaten up with guilt, shame, fears and insecurities and obtaining, if he's lucky, a barely perceptible physical feeling, the male is, nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he'll swim a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there'll be a friendly pussy awaiting him. He'll screw a woman he despises, any snaggle-toothed hag, and, further, pay for the opportunity. Why? Relieving physical tension isn't the answer, as masturbation suffices for that. It's not ego satisfaction; that doesn't explain screwing corpses and babies."

"Completely egocentric, unable to relate, empathize or identify and consisting of a vast, pervasive, diffuse sexuality, the male is psychically passive. He hates his passivity, so he projects it onto women, defines the male as active, then sets out to prove that he is ("prove he's a Man"). His main means of attempting to prove it is screwing (Big Man with a Big Dick tearing off a Big Piece). Since he's attempting to prove an error, he must "prove" it again and again. Screwing, then, is a desperate, compulsive attempt to prove he's not passive, not a woman; but he is passive and does want to be a woman."

"Being an incomplete female, the male spends his life attempting to complete himself, become female. He attempts to do this by constantly seeking out, fraternizing with and trying to live through and fuse with the female and by claiming as his own all female characteristics - emotional strength and independence, forcefulness, dynamism, decisiveness, coolness, objectivity, assertiveness, courage, integrity, vitality, intensity, depth of character, grooviness, etc. - and projecting onto women all male traits - vanity, frivolity, triviality, weakness, etc. It should be said, though, that the male has one glaring area of superiority over the female - public relations. He has done a brilliant job of convincing millions of women that men are women and women are men."

"The male claim that females find fulfillment through motherhood and sexuality reflects what males think they'd find fulfilling if they were female."

"Women, in other words, don't have penis envy; men have pussy envy. When the male accepts his passivity, defines himself as a woman (Males as well as females think men are women and women are men), and becomes a transvestite he loses his desire to screw (or to do anything else, for that matter; he fulfills himself as a dragqueen) and gets his cock chopped off. He then derives a continuous diffuse sexual feeling from "being a woman." Screwing is, for a man, a defense against his desire to be female. Sex is, itself, a sublimation."

"Every man, deep down, knows he's a worthless peice of shit."

"The male has a negative Midas Touch - everything he touches turns to shit."

"Our "society" is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units. Desperately insecure, fearing his woman will leave him if she's exposed to other men or to anything remotely resembling life, the male seeks to isolate her from other men and from what little civilization there is, so he moves her out to the suburbs, a collection of self-absorbed couples and their kids. Isolation, further, enables him to try to maintain his pretense of being an individual by being a "rugged individualist", a loner, equating non-co-operation and solitariness with individuality."

"A true community consists of individuals - not mere species members, not couples - respecting each others individuality and privacy while at the same time interacting with each other mentally and emotionally - free spirits in free relation to each other - and co-operating with each other to achieve common ends. Traditionalists say the basic unit of "society" is the family; "hippies" say the tribe; noone says the individual."

"Although wanting to be an individual, the male is scared of anything about him that's the slightest bit different from other men; it causes him to suspect he's not really a "Man," that he's passive and totally sexual, a highly upsetting suspicion. If other men are A and he's not, he must be not a man; he must be a fag. So he tries to affirm his "Manhood" by being like all the other men. Differentness in other men, as well as in himself, threatens him; it means they're fags, who he must, at all costs, avoid, so he tries to ensure that all other men conform."

"The male dares to be different to the degree that he accepts his passivity and his desire to be female, his fagginess. The farthest out male is the dragqueen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all other dragqueens; like the functionalist, he has an identity - a female; he tries to define all his troubles away - but still no individuality. Not completely convinced that he's a woman, highly insecure about being sufficiently female, he conforms compulsively to the man-made feminine stereotype, ending up as nothing but a bundle of stilted mannerisms."

"To be sure he's a "Man," the male must see to it that the female be clearly a "Woman," the opposite of a "Man," that is, the female must act like a faggot. And Daddy's Girl, all of whose female instincts were tromped out of her when little, easily and obligingly adapts herself to the role."