All Quotes

"Lucifer always has reasons for what He does. He rarely explains. His intentions are malevolent only toward malicious people ...which you are not."

"“Listen carefully. I am about to take you in to see—no, for you to be seen by—an Entity who is to me, and to my brother your god Yahweh, as Yahweh is to you. Understand me?” “Uh…maybe. I’m not sure.” “A is to B as B is got C. To this Entity your lord god Jehovah is equivalent to a child building sand castles at a beach, then destroying them in childish tantrums. To Him, I am a child, too. I look up to Him as you look up to your triple deity—father, son, and holy ghost. I don’t worship this Entity as God; He does not demand, does not expect, and does not want, that sort of bootlicking. Yahweh may be the only god who ever thought up that curious vice—at least I do not know of another planet or place in any universe where god-worship is practiced. But I am young and not much traveled.”"

"You are in great danger. And so am I, although I think your danger is much greater than mine. But, Alec, I can assure you of this: If It decides to extinguish you, you will never know it. It is not a sadistic God."

"Mr. Chairman, almost everything about a human creature is ridiculous, except its ability to suffer bravely and die gallantly for whatever it loves and believes in. The validity of that belief, the appropriateness of that love, is irrelevant; it is the bravery and the gallantry that count. These are uniquely human qualities, independent of mankind’s creator, who has none of them himself—as I know, since he is my brother...and I lack them, too."

"There is an artistic principle — not a rule — that volitionals should be treated consistently. But to insist on kindness would be to eliminate that degree of freedom for which volition in creatures was invented. Without the possibility of tragedy the volitionals might as well be golems."

"For a creature to act out its own minor art, the rules under which it acts must be either known to it or be such that the rules can become known through trial and error — with error not always fatal. In short the creature must be able to learn and to benefit by its experience."

"Oy! Every prophecy I fulfilled! And now He tells me consistent I am not! This is justice?"

"A man who is happy at home doesn’t lie awake nights worrying about the hereafter."

"I have what I want. I would not want to be a saint in Heaven if Margrethe was not with me; I wouldn't fear going to Hell if she was there — not that I believe in Hell or ever stood a chance of being a saint in Heaven. Samuel Clemens put it: "Where she was, there was Eden." Omar phrased it: "—thou beside me in the wilderness, ah wilderness were paradise enow." Browning termed it: Summum Bonum. All were asserting the same great truth, which is for me: Heaven is where Margrethe is."

"As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note."

"Ah, music! What a beautiful art! But what a wretched profession!"

"It rhymes with complaining."

"Where do babies come from? Don't bother asking adults. They lie like pigs. However, diligent independent research and hours of playground consultation have yielded fruitful, if tentative, results. There are several theories. Near as we can figure out, it has something to do with acting ridiculous in the dark. We believe it is similar to dogs when they act peculiar and ride each other. This is called "making love". Careful study of popular song lyrics, advertising catch-lines, TV sitcoms, movies, and T-Shirt inscriptions offers us significant clues as to its nature. Apparently it makes grown-ups insipid and insane. Some graffiti was once observed that said "sex is good." All available evidence, however, points to the contrary."

"Ô mes petites amoureuses, Que je vous hais !"

"J'allais sous le ciel, Muse! et j'étais ton féal."

"Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse. Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou."

"Mon triste coeur bave à la poupe."

"A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles, Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes !"

"Elle est retrouvée, Quoi ? — L'Éternité. C'est la mer allée Avec le soleil."

"O saisons, ô châteaux, Quelle âme est sans défauts ?"

"J'ai embrassé l'aube d'été."

"Il pleut doucement sur la ville."

"Plus léger qu'un bouchon j'ai dansé sur les flots."

"Plus douce qu'aux enfants la chair des pommes sures, L'eau verte pénétra ma coque de sapin."

"Je me suis baigné dans le Poème De la Mer... Dévorant les azurs verts."

"J'ai vu le soleil bas, taché d'horreurs mystiques, Illuminant de longs figements violets, Pareils à des acteurs de drames très-antiques."

"J'ai vu des archipels sidéraux! et des îles Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur: Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t'exiles, Million d'oiseaux d'or, ô future Vigueur ?"

"Un soir, j'ai assis la Beauté sur mes genoux. - Et je l'ai trouvée amère. - Et je l'ai injuriée."

"Je parvins à faire s'évanouir dans mon esprit toute l'espérance humaine."

"La vie est la farce à mener par tous."

"Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient."

"Je suis esclave de mon baptême."

"La vieillerie poétique avait une bonne part dans mon alchimie du verbe."

"L'amour est à réinventer, on le sait."

"Moi ! moi qui me suis dit mage ou ange, dispensé de toute morale, je suis rendu au sol."

"Il faut être absolument moderne."

"Je me crois en enfer, donc j'y suis."

"Je est un autre."

"Je dis qu'il faut être voyant, se faire voyant. Le poète se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens."

"Anna Margolin was greatly influenced by Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud; among the Germans, by Else Lasker-Schüler and Rainer Maria Rilke; and among the Yiddish poets, by Itsik Manger and Avrom Sutzkever."

"What Rimbaud did for language, and not merely for poetry, is only beginning to be understood. And this more by readers than by writers, I feel. At least, in our country. Nearly all the modern French poets have been influenced by him. Indeed, one might say that contemporary French poetry owes everything to Rimbaud. Thus far, however, none have gone beyond him — in daring or invention."

"This violence is a calm that disturbs you."

"But I would adore that thief who is my mother."

"If the hero join combat with night and conquer it, may shreds of it remain upon him!"

"I suffered at the time from an ugliness I no longer find on my childhood face."

"By remaining inaccessible, he became the epitome of those whom I have named and who stagger me. I was therefore chaste."

"Fierce and pure, I was the theater of a fairyland restored to life."

"To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance."

"Yet, what is their violence compared to mine, which was to accept theirs, to make it mine, to wish it for myself, to intercept it, to utilize it, to force it upon myself, to know it, to premeditate it, to discern and assume its perils? But what was mine, willed and necessary for my defense, my toughness, my rigor, compared to the violence they underwent like a malediction, risen from an inner fire simultaneously with an outer light which sets them ablaze and illuminates us?"

"But--criminals are remote from you--as in love, they turn away and turn me away from the world and its laws. Thiers smells of sweat, sperm, and blood. In short, to my body and my thristy soul it offers devotion. It was because their world contains these erotic conditions that I was bent on evil."