People From Buffalo

"By the dim yellow glow of the overhead bulb, Lepidopt stared at the bomb and the time machine, and he tried to imagine what might go wrong."

"Gabriel scowled through his glasses. Why were ghosts such imbeciles? Who could be blamed for striving, at any cost, to avoid forever the decay-of-self that death was?"

"I’m not a joiner. Any time you work with people, they turn out to be inept clowns."

"“She chose to reject me!” That wasn’t a choice, lad—that was an empty gun saying click.”"

"After a few seconds, he said, “You’re devout, aren’t you? Some species of Christian, I imagine?” She smiled faintly. “Yes.” “I would say that was a mark against your intelligence, but since you’re both nice girls, I won’t say it. But you assume a sequel to this life, one in which noble sacrifices are rewarded, or at least noted. I’m convinced that no note is taken at all, and that, as far as any one of us is concerned, the universe comes to an end at the moment of his death.”"

"“Doesn’t she read chicken entrails?” “Oh! No, astrology.” “Same sort of thing.”"

"“I got to missing her, the way things used to be here, the past. The past,” she repeated. “It’s always out there, isn’t it? I hate now. I hate that whenever you look at a clock, it shows a different time. What’s the use of knowing what time it is, if it’s always changing? And it’s always later!”"

"“She did love us. Does.” “She loves you the way a drowning person loves somebody they can push down and climb on top of.”"

"When my mother told me the meek would inherit the earth, I told her all I wanted of it was the shovelful that would cover my cold face."

"“I’d offer you a drink,” he said, “but all I have is the good stuff.”"

"“Did he say who he was?” asked Scott. “I asked him,” said Ariel. “He sort of laughed and said he was between names.”"

"I owe a fortune in student loans, and after I got my degree in education and tried to apply it, I caught on that the emperor had no clothes—"

"“‘Allies,’” he explained, “means we agree not to kill each other.” “I knew that,” she said. “It just slipped my mind for a second.”"

"The terrain is the body, the map is the anatomy chart."

"He fought to think rationally. Guilt, he reminded himself, is an electro-chemical event in the physical brain. It’s one of the useless side-effects of consciousness, which is itself irrelevant. The ideal is the lines in Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall:” “Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.” The important thing was that all of it moved in determinate grooves."

"Terracotta says people can’t help what they do, any more than a rock rolling down a hill can. The rock might think it has a choice about rolling left or right, just like people think they choose what they do, but really it’s all just physics."

"“Maybe later,” he told her. “Time yet for a hundred indecisions.”"

"“I think we’re dead.” “Maybe.” Vickery shook his head. “Would that make a difference?”"

"Guesses based on guesses are of no value."

"Now she was giving him a worried look. “Say something sane.” He smiled bleakly, his eyes on the cars ahead. “You and I are not normal people.” “Huh.” She shook her head. “That’s not sane, that’s just true.”"

"“So what do you, you know, do,” she asked, “in Barstow?” Her voice was resolutely light. “Beside talk to ghosts?”"

"“Where’s the sane world?” Castine asked as she followed him around to the front of the Saturn. “I used to live there. I think I still have pictures.”"

"While John Roberts was surely chosen for a number of reasons-his thin judicial record not the least of them-I do think the Bushies were aware that his golden-boy appearance would be good PR. Even many Democrats were duped into viewing him as a sort of "moderate" conservative. Beneath the attractive facade and genteel personality, however, lies a hideous, Borkish creature. His rulings since I drew this cartoon have neatly borne out my prediction that he would steer the court to the hard right."

"We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them."

"Either he is a liar or he is too naïve to hold any important job including, and especially, this one. This is like a legal ruling written by the little mermaid."

"Chief Justice Roberts pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute"

"the people's right to have their day in court is being foreclosed. Corporate victories in federal and state elections work hand in hand with this mission by assuring the nomination of more commercially-responsive judges such as Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Scalia and Alito, with the same being true in many states."

"Chief Justice John Roberts memorably quipped, in the Parents Involved decision that gutted Brown, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," which actually meant, ignore the effects of discrimination by pretending to be color-blind."

"By properly contenting itself with the decision of actual cases or controversies at the instance of someone suffering distinct and palpable injury, the judiciary leaves for the political branches the generalized grievances that are their responsibility under the Constitution. Far from an assault on the other branches, this is an insistence that they are supreme within their respective spheres, protected from intrusion — however welcome or invited — of the judiciary. Separation of powers is a zero-sum game. If one branch unconstitutionally aggrandizes itself, it is at the expense of one of the other branches."

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

"But the First Amendment protects against the Government; it does not leave us at the mercy of noblesse oblige. We would not uphold an unconstitutional statute merely because the Government promised to use it responsibly. [...] The Government’s assurance that it will apply [a statutory provision] more restrictively than its language provides is pertinent only as an implicit acknowledgment of the potential constitutional problems with a more natural reading."

"Alternatively, the Government proposes that law enforcement agencies "develop protocols to address" concerns raised by cloud computing. Probably a good idea, but the Founders did not fight a revolution to gain the right to government agency protocols."

"Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law... Just who do we think we are?"

"When I'm not drinkin' baby, you are on my mind. When I'm not sleeping baby, when I'm not sleeping mama, when I'm not sleeping, you know you'll find me cryin'"

"Well there are walls, that make a prison, many names that can bring hate. You tear 'em down and ride 'em over."

"Don't look back, over your shoulder! Keep your eye on freedom shore! Because you know the brave man with you, also pays for the wages of war."

"I want to be alone. I need to touch each stone, face the grave that I have grown. I want to be alone."

"Catch a boat to England baby, maybe to Spain. Wherever I have gone, wherever I've been and gone, wherever I have gone... The blues are all the same."

"And today many artists like myself refuse to be involved in some ideas. In painting – for me – no fooling-the-eye, no window-hole-in-the wall, no illusions, no representations, no associations, no distortions, no paint-caricaturing, no dream pictures of dripping, no delirium trimmings, no sadism or slashing, no therapy, no kicking-the-effigy, no clowning, no acrobatics, no heroics, no self-pity, no guilt.. ..no abstraction of everything, no nonsense, no involvements, no confusing painting with everything that is no painting."

"It’s been said many times in world art writing that one can find some of painting’s meaning by looking not only at what painters do, but what they refuse to do."

"I wanted to be soft like Rothko and ruthless like Ad Reinhardt."

"What greater challenge today.. ..to disorder and insensitivity; what greater propaganda for integration than this emotionally intense, dramatic division of space? (quote in 1943, discussing the art of Piet Mondrian)"

"An abstract painting will react to you if you react to it. You get from it what you bring to it. It will meet you half way but no further. It is alive if you are. It represents something and so do you. YOU, SIR, ARE A SPACE, TOO."

"The artists is responsible for his history and his nature, his history is part of his nature."

"vagueness is a 'romantic' value.. ..an emphasis on geometry is an emphasis on the 'known', on order and knowledge."

"The one standard in art is oneness and fineness, rightness and purity, abstractness and evanescence. The one thing to say about art is, its breathlessness, lifelessness, deathlessness, contentlessness, formlessness, spacelessness, and timelessness. This is always the end of art."

"The one art that is abstract and pure enough to have the one problem and possibility, in our time and timelessness, of the 'one single grand original problem' is pure abstract painting. Abstract painting is not just another school or movement or style but the first truly unmannered and untrammeled and un-entangled, styleless, universal painting. No other art or painting is detached or empty or immaterial enough."

"The art of 'figuring' or 'picturing' is not a fine art. An artist who is lobbying as a 'creature of circumstances' or log rolling as a 'victim of fate' is not a fine master artist. No one ever forces an artist to be pure."

"The one thing to say about art and life is that art is art and life is life, that art is not life and life is not art. A 'slice-of-life' art is no better or worse than a 'slice-of-art' life. Fine art is not a 'means of making a living' or a 'way of living a life', and a artist who dedicates his life to his art or his art to his life burdens his art with his life and his life with his art. Art that is a matter of life and death is neither fine nor free."

"The one place for art-as-art is the museum of fine art. The reason of the museum or fine art is the preservation of ancient and modern art that cannot be made again and that does not have to be done again. A museum of fine art should exclude everything but fine art, and be separate of museums of ethnology, geology, archaeology, history.. .Any disturbance of a true museum's soundlessness, timelessness, airlessness, and lifelessness is a disrespect."