University Of California Berkeley Alumni

"Like it or not, a translator has to take liberties. How many depends on closely the translator hews to the words of the text. I’m on the side of the reader, so I’d never produce a literal, word-for-word translation, however faithful. My goal is always to produce a text so smooth that the reader isn’t aware it’s a translation. It should read like a book that Mathieu would have written if he were more fluent in English. So I occasionally take liberties, especially with jokes, slang, and idioms. But thanks to email, I can run my textual sins by the author before committing them to paper. Even after some forty books and screenplays, I still love doing translations."

"As a writer de Villiers had a serious shortcoming: The man could not write. (...) Indeed his French prose is so mechanical, so flat and so replete with Franglais. (...) William Rodarmor's English translation of Madmen is actually better than the original."

"Food makes history in France, in legend and in fact. (...) But when Charles de Gaulle radioed the French underground that the D-Day invasion was imminent, his message included the key phrase les carottes sont cuites. Literally, this means "the carrots are cooked," and metaphorically "it's all over." What other nation marches to war in the glow of beta carotene?"

"Translating a big book is like getting married: You’re going to spend a long time together. You may put in months weighing each word, often more carefully than the author.""

"I hope this collection [of short stories from French authors] does justice to that variety [of distinctive literary voices]. Some of the stories are funny, some are sad, a few are mysterious. The excerpts may seem to end too soon, but that's all to the good. These pieces are neither bonbons nor full-course meals. They're more like hearty appetizers. You're at a bountiful buffet, and you should feel free to come back for more."

"Like most translators, I’m a ventriloquist, and I work hard to make people sound like themselves, and not like me."

"[Literary translation work] has all the pleasures of creative writing, and you never have writer’s block."

"Good writers are an editor's stock in trade (...) You have to treasure them and treat them right."

"My research has demonstrated that virtually all shamanic traditions draw on the power of four archetypes in order to live in harmony and balance with our environment and with our own inner nature: the Warrior, the Healer, the Visionary, and the Teacher. Because each archetype draws on the deepest mythic roots of humanity, we too can tap into their wisdom. When we learn to live these archetypes within ourselves, we will begin to heal ourselves and our fragmented world. The following four principles, each based on an archetype, comprise what I call the Four-Fold Way: 1. Show up, or choose to be present. Being present allows us to access the human resources of power, presence, and communication. This is the way of the Warrior. 2. Pay attention to what has heart and meaning. Paying attention opens us to the human resources of love, gratitude, acknowledgment, and validation. This is the way of the Healer. 3. Tell the truth without blame or judgment. Nonjudgmental truthfulness maintains our authenticity, and develops our inner vision and intuition. This is the way of the Visionary. 4. Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome. Openness and nonattachment help us recover the human resources of wisdom and objectivity. This is the way of the Teacher."

"The shamanic traditions, practiced by agrarian and indigenous peoples the world over, remind us that for centuries human beings have used the wisdom of nature and ritual to support change and life transitions rather than to ignore or deny life processes, as we so often do. (p9)"

"Spiritualism is the highest form of political consciousness. The native peoples of the West are among the world's surviving proprietors of that kind of consciousness. They are here to impart that message. It is important to use it wisely and well as we go into the twenty-first century-a time of bridging ancient wisdoms into the creative tapestry of contemporary times. (p11)"

"Every culture has ways of maintaining health and well-being. Healers throughout the world recognize the importance of maintaining or retrieving the four universal healing salves: storytelling, singing, dancing, and silence. Shamanic societies believe that when we stop singing, stop dancing, are no longer enchanted by stories, or become uncomfortable with silence, we experience soul loss, which opens the door to discomfort and disease. The gifted Healer restores the soul through use of the healing salves. (p54)"

"When we experience confusion, we should wait rather than act. If circumstances make it impossible not to act, we should seek pockets of clarity and act only in those areas. (p121)"

"When we open to being powerful, loving, creative, and wise, we experience the world and ourselves as the many splendid things that we are. (from the Conclusion, p130)"

"Healers in all major traditions recognize that the power of love is the most potent healing force available to all human beings. Effective Healers from any culture are those who extend the arms of love: acknowledgment, acceptance, recognition, validation, and gratitude. (p49)"

"Many times, we are forced at an early age to hide our true selves in order to survive. At some point this hiding becomes unnecessary, yet we find it hard to break the habit. Every day we choose anew whether we will support the authentic self or the false self. (p80)"

"If we observe what causes us to lose our sense of humor, we can identify our point of attachment. Where we maintain our sense of humor is where we are detached and can remain flexible. (p111)"

"In the West we know almost too well the importance of activity and movement; we also need to understand that silence and periods of solitude are essential ways to open to inner guidance and to replenish our soul. (p117)"

"It is important to consider in what ways we can bring forward the "good, true, and beautiful" that is carried in our heritage; and to know that the quality of our life contributes to the opportunities and challenges for future generations to come. (p115)"

"The way of the Teacher is a practice in trust. Trust is the container out of which the qualities of wisdom grow: clarity, objectivity, discernment, and detachment. Wisdom is at work when we are open to all options. (p109)"

"When we can answer "yes" to the question, "Is my self-worth as strong as my self-critic?" then we are ready to engage our creative expression beyond patterns of denial or indulgence. (p82)"

"We express denial in our lives when we avoid certain people or issues and when we see things only as we want them to be rather than to accept them as they are. Underneath every denial pattern is the underlying fear that we will not be able to handle conflict and a deep human need to maintain peace, balance, and harmony at all costs. In deep denial we will abandon ourselves to keep the peace rather than communicate our feelings directly. (p81)"

"Our reactions to the new experiences we meet daily may well be a preparation for how we will handle or approach our death. Do we approach new experiences with curiosity, wonder, or excitement? Or do we handle the unexpected and unfamiliar by becoming controlling and fearful? (p115)"

"People who make scenes, throw tantrums, or blow things out of proportion actually have a strong need for acceptance. Because they are terrified of their own feelings of insecurity or vulnerability, they use exaggeration as a way to hide those feelings. (p81)"

"The principle Teacher of detachment in Nature is often Grandmother Ocean, who is the primary nature example of flexibility and resilience. (p119)"

"Those shadow parts of us will dominate or persist until they are integrated. (p96)"

"Where we lose our capacity to play or to maintain our sense of humor, we find ourselves either seeing only that which is not working, or becoming attached to our own perception as the only viewpoint to have. In either case, whether it's our blind spots or fixed perspectives, we lack spontaneity and become over-identified with our own ways of looking at things. (p99)"

"the greatest remorse is love unexpressed. (p49)"

"Where we are not strong-hearted is where we lack the courage to be authentic or to say what is true for us. Strong-heartedness is where we have the courage to be all of who we are in our life. (p50)"

"The way of the Teacher accesses the human resource of wisdom, and every culture has traditional and nontraditional means of education. Whether it is an established school system or an apprenticeship, the process of learning and teaching is universal. The principle that guides the Teacher is to be open to outcome, not attached to outcome. The Teacher has wisdom, teaches trust, and understands the need for detachment. (p109)"

"Creative individuals are open to multiple ways of looking; and they are very facile in letting go and moving toward options or perspectives they had not considered. (p99)"

"The other is that dog breeds w/different shaped heads are predictive of their demeanor and intelligence. And while I don’t! believe in Phrenology I now do pay some attention to how the shapes of peoples heads relates to their intellect and steadiness, or lack thereof."

"is a currency that is involved in generating movement that's not coincidental and is involved in motivation and pursuit of particular rewards."

"I think the education system should start, in my opinion, with teaching kids how to understand themselves, what to do in difficult scenarios that's really anchored in the real pillars of biology and psychology, and trying to take some of the mystery out of trying to navigate the tough business of growing up."

"The reason we write equations... is because it's just as easy to translate them into Japanese, or Russian... German... French or English, and I'll translate them into English."

"S^2 = x^2 - t^2This is Einstein's 1905 geometry. All he noticed was that distances are not objective. How far it is from New York to Chicago depends on how fast you're going by when you look at it. And lengths of time are not objective. What you call a minute or an hour depends upon how fast you're going by when you look at the clock."

"Why would I need a newer type telescope. Our older type telescopes do everything I need... There are a lot of people who like to invent... harder ways to do things. I let them do it."

"Now if we consider the region just... this side of where they would go to zero energy... we see... the redshift of the radiation means that the energy of the particles is extremely low. The way we find... the energy of a particle is... its radiation..."

"Suppose we have two space ships [travelling opposite directions]... These people see those clocks [in the other spaceship] are spinning around too fast. These people [in the opposing spaceship] see those clocks [in the first spaceship] are spinning around too fast. After they've passed each other these people see those clocks have slowed down, and those people see those [other] clocks have slowed down. Now whose clocks have slowed down? There is no such thing as how fast a clock is going."

"I didn't create a telescope. ...I'm famous for being too retarded to make an . You're supposed to do something to get famous for it! But we... weren't going to do photography. We just wanted to see what's out there and we made a 24 incher, that's more than 13 foot , and we've run it for more than 80,000 miles in the public parks and in Indian reservations, up to Canada and down to Mexico. But we weren't going to do photography. We din't need to track things across the sky, so we never did all that. ...So the people who need to be blamed are the people who invented those equatorial mounts. You should get on their case, not mine, because that's an invention. What we did is not an invention."

"It shows through in us too. Everybody runs after peace and security. That's running after the changeless. Everybody runs after freedom. That's running after the infinite, and everybody runs after happiness. We all get married and have children... and you're restricted to the pursuit of happiness, not to its attainment. It's written."

"But if you don't know about that... when a fire engine is coming toward you the bell has a high pitch, and when goes past you it goes away with a low pitch. Ding, ding, ding... The reason that it slurs like that, is because the fire engine missed you."

"[I]f this whole thing is due to a mistake, there's a reason why it's made out of frustration. ...My model says that the universe is going to be made out of frustration."

"So radiation does a similar thing. If something is coming toward you, the s are shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum. That's the high energy end of the spectrum, which corresponds to the high pitch of the bell on the fire engine... [W]hen it goes away, the radiation is shifted to the lower end... the red end of the spectrum. That's called ed."

"[T]he way I understand it from those old physicists is that there's something underneath which we didn't notice, and... they said... they have an answer for why inertia shows, why gravity shows, why electricity shows. We have no answer at Caltech. We know how things fall... how they coast... how they're electrical. We don't know why. ...[T]hose old physicists gave us a way of looking at this thing that says why. If you mistake one thing for another, the one thing has to show, and they said what's underneath has to be changeless, infinite and undivided... [T]he... [unchanging] that shows through is inertia, the infinite is the electrical energy and... gravity is the undivided showing through."

"I was asked to give a talk... [by] the lady at the pretzel farm in Sierra... You understand a pretzel farm, where all those folded s are? ...[T]he lady ...asked me to give a talk on frustration. ...I said I was walking down through ... in Los Angeles in the winter... the rainy season, and there's this little stream of water coming along beside me... I was thinking that the poets say it will be happy when it reaches the sea. But the poets are wrong... The sea is trying desperately to get to the center of the earth, and the rocks are in the way, and it gets frustrated. ...So the rocks are trying desperately to get to the center of the earth, and the iron of the earth's core is in the way, and the rocks get frustrated. And the iron at the earth's core is trying desperately to fall into the sun, and its inertia is in the way, and it goes round and round... 18 miles a second, and it gets frustrated. And the sun is trying desperately to get to the center of the galaxy, and its inertia, the way it goes around 150 miles a second, and it gets frustrated. And the galaxy has been trying to merge with all the rest of the matter of the observable universe, but the expansion is in the way, and it gets frustrated. And the expansion has been trying to reduce the density of the universe, but the recycling is in the way, and it gets frustrated."

"It's high time... that the amateurs did something else besides taking pictures with those 4 and 6 inchers, and looking at the pictures in the daytime with their s. They're not going to see them with their cone cells through the telescope. They're going to see them with their s, and the rod cells are wired the wrong way. For this whole bunch of cells there is only one wire to the brain, and for this whole bunch [in the other eye] there's only one wire to the brain. So your resolution is between this bunch and this bunch... so if you want to see what those pictures look like, take them in the closet and turn out the light, and damn it all, they look just like what you see through the eyepiece. Don't think I don't do all these things. I do."

"I know. You'll say, "I'm going to go along with the damned clock. That's entirely arbitrary, and the rest of the universe is not going along with your damned clock anyway."

"[T]here's nothing invariant about how it [the universe] looks to all of us. There are a lot of us and it looks different to a whole bunch of us... But if you ask... the fundamental questions what's underneath, then I think it comes out the same. ...[T]he changeless, the infinite and the undivided, and if there's no other way to do this except making mistakes, but you're not required to make a mistake. I think it's time to fire me."

"I'm not responsible for any of those equations. ...I'm just your tour guide."