People From Indiana

"It must be fun to be you And play with love as you do To treat each new romance As merely one more dance Or just another book to glance through It must be fun to acquire Whatever heart you desire, And when you're bored with it To tear it in two, It must be fun to be you."

"You'd be so nice, You'd be paradise To come home to and love."

"You'd be so nice to come home to You'd be so nice by the fire..."

"Relax for a moment my Jerry Come out of your dark monastery While Venus is beaming above. Darling, let's talk about love."

"You're the pain in my — The hurricane in my — Supersensitive heart, dear. Still I love you, I know, And the reason is merely because You irritate me so!"

"This rule I propose, Always have an ace in the hole. Always try to arrive at Having an ace some place private. Always have an ace in the hole."

"Sad times May follow your tracks, Bad times May bar you from Saks, Add times When Satan in slacks Breaks down your self control..."

"You are my fav'rite star, My haven in heaven above, You are ev'rything I love."

"Too bad, I'm no poet, I happen to know it, But anyway Here's a roundelay I wrote last night about you..."

"I have a phobia of anything that doesn't die in the microwave after five seconds."

"The critics seem like the legendary blind philosophers who each touching the creature in a different place, bring back conflicting reports of what an elephant is. … I would like to suggest, with no pretensions to being any less blind than the others, that a key to these contradictions may be found in what appears to be the image in terms which Farmer most often presents himself as an artist, the trickster god. … Farmer seems to have a special affinity for Trickster."

"Can imagination act Perpendicular to fact? Can it be a kite that flies Till the Earth, umbrella-wise, Folds and drops away from sight?"

"Miles above the Earth we know, Fancy's rocket roars. Below, Here and Now are needles which Sew a pattern black as pitch, Waiting for the rocket's light."

"“Perhaps you could tell me how many angels may stand on the point of a pin?”… De Salcedo snorted. “I’ll tell you. Philosophically speaking, you may put as many angels on a pinhead as you want to. Actually speaking, you may put only as many as there is room for. Enough of that. I'm interested in facts, not fancies.”"

"Sawbeaked epitome of bodiless Idea, tossed by gusts of ether, dive Through abstract mists and raid the sea of fact Eat rich strange fish, grow long bright feathers, press Form's flesh around thought's rib, and so derive From the act of beauty, beauty of the act."

"Beauty in this Iron Age must turn From fluid living rainbow shapes to torn And sootened fragments, ashes in an urn On whose gray surface runes are traced by a Norn Who hopes to wake the Future to arise In Phoenix-fashion, and to shine with rays To blast the sight of modern men whose dyes Of selfishness and lust have stained our days..."

"Reader, pray that soon this Iron Age Will crumble, and Beauty escape the rusting cage."

"Prometheus, I have no Titan's might, Yet I, too, must each dusk renew my heart, For daytime's vulture talons tear apart The tender alcoves built by love at night."

"Oh, I'd reach beyond the comma of you To the invisible phrase, the dangling Omega! No use. No act Of mine or mind denies the ante-cerebellum fact Of furry you, poised fleetingly, bright flex, Black reflex, too leaping for me to ink and fix As period to end what has no period, no, no End..."

"We too. No wisdom to utter. You've beauty, flux, and terror To tell. So've I. And they're Very hard to mutter Through so much chatter and stutter."

"Let those who think the soul is shallow rail, They must be warned before they dare to leap They'll plunge into the twilight depths where sweep In ceaseless thirst great teeth too swift to fail."

"Drowned idols swirl like seeds in chaos' wine. Look, Job! Caught Beauty, held to light, now apes A good, now evil, thing — the shifting sign And spectrum of archaic, psychic shapes."

"Liquor’s good for one thing. It makes you forget what you’re afraid not to forget."

"The real heroes, and heroines, are those who deal heroically with the everyday cares of life, though God knows they’ve been multiplied enormously. It’s not the guy who kills a dragon once in his lifetime and then retires that’s a hero. It's the guy who kills cockroaches and rats every day, day after day, and doesn't rest on his laurels until he’s an old man, if then."

"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."

"Though Melville omitted it, Captain Ahab said, "In one sense, Aleister Crowley is lower than whale shit. In another, he's as high as God's hat. The true shaman knows that God's hat is made out of dried whale shit.""

"One thing is sure, O comrades, that the love That fights to keep us rooted in the earth, But also urges us to dare the stars, This irresistible, this ancient power Wedged in the soul, unshakable, is the light That burns our roots and leaves us free for Space."

"The way is open, comrades, free as Space Alone is free. The only gold is love, A coin that we have minted from the light Of others who have cared for us on Earth And who have deposited in us the power That nerves our nerves to seize the burning stars."

"Eyes forward! Sing a paean to the light That God gives us to net the distant stars In eyes that once were blinded with black earth. Man had no time for aught but toll, no space For aught but war. Yet God, in His great love, Has cleared our eyes and given a hint of Power."

"Now we have lit a candle to the power Of atoms; now we know we're heirs of light Itself..."

"Yes, we hope to seed a new, rich earth. We hope to breed a race of men whose power Dwells in hearts as open as all Space Itself, who ask for nothing but the light That rinses the heart of hate so that the stars Above will be below when man has Love."

"God, Whose hand holds stars, as we lump earth In our fingers, give us power, give us light To hold all love within our breast's small space."

"And there is another feeling, one which he shares with most of humankind. He knows he's screwed up his life, or something has twisted it. Every thinking man and woman knows this. Even the smug and dimwitted realize this unconsciously. But a baby, that beautiful being, that unsmirched blank tablet, unformed [[angel], represents a new hope. Perhaps it won't screw up. Perhaps it'll grow up to be a healthy confident reasonable good-humored unselfish loving man or woman. 'It won't be like me or my next-door neighbor,' the proud, but apprehensive, parent swears."

"Zeitgeist rides tonight, and the devil take the hindmost!"

"Yesterday's monomaniac is tomorrow's messiah…"

"Strong blasphemers thrive only when strong believers thrive."

"His wife had held him in her arms as if she could keep death away from him. He had cried out, "My God, I am a dead man!""

"Death, the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Society, had arrived at last. Blackness. Nothingness. He did not even know that his heart had given out forever. Nothingness. Then his eyes opened. His heart was beating strongly. He was strong, very strong! All the pain of the gout in his feet, the agony in his liver, the torture in his heart, all were gone. It was so quiet he could hear the blood moving in his head. He was alone in a world of soundlessness. A bright light of equal intensity was everywhere. He could see, yet he did not understand what he was seeing. What were these things above, beside, below him? Where was he?"

"The world took a shape which he could grasp, though he could not comprehend it. Above him, on both sides, below him, as far as he could see, bodies floated. They were arranged in vertical and horizontal rows. The up-and-down ranks were separated by red rods, slender as broomsticks, one of which was twelve inches from the feet of the sleepers and the other twelve inches from their heads. Each body was spaced about six feet from the body above and below and on each side. The rods came up from an abyss without bottom and soared into an abyss without ceiling. That grayness into which the rods and the bodies, up and down, right and left, disappeared was neither the sky nor the earth. There was nothing in the distance except the lackluster of infinity."

"It was like no hell or heaven of which he had ever heard or read, and he had thought that he was acquainted with every theory of the afterlife. He had died. Now he was alive. He had scoffed all his life at a life-after-death. For once, he could not deny that he had been wrong. But there was no one present to say, "I told you so, you damned infidel!" Of all the millions, he alone was awake."

"In a frenzy, kicking his legs and moving his arms in a swimmer's breaststroke, he managed to fight toward the rod. The closer he got to it, the stronger the web of force became. He did not give up. If he did, he would be back where he had been and without enough strength to begin fighting again. It was not his nature to give up until all his strength had been expended."

"The aerial canoe had no visible means of support, he thought, and it was a measure of his terror that he did not even think about his pun. No visible means of support. Like a magical vessel out of The Thousand and One Nights."

"All the human beings I met were either sure that there would be no afterlife or else that they would get preferential treatment in the hereafter."

"“I did it!” she said. “I...I! I wanted to! Oh, what a vile low whore I am!” “I don’t remember offering you any money.”"

"Burton did not believe in miracles. Nothing happened that could not be explained by physical principles — if you knew all the facts."

"Burton, though an infidel, made it his business to investigate thoroughly every religion. Know a man’s faith, and you knew at least half the man. Know his wife, and you knew the other half."

"Burton sighed, laughed loudly, and said, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Another fairy tale to give men hope. The old religions have been discredited — although some refuse to face even that fact — so new ones must be invented.”"

"Resurrection, like politics, makes strange bedfellows."

"A miracle: a chance distribution of events, occurring one time in a billion."

"Of course, I’m only indulging in mankind’s vice of trying to make a symbol out of coincidence."