The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

--Oscar Wilde

  (via - or see more Hunter S Thompson quotes here)

Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, well clever and well tall. He was only president for four years, from 1861 until his assassination in 1865, but in that short time he led his country through enormous change and adversity. We're talking constitutional, military and moral crisis (American Civil War), during which he preserved the Union, ended slavery, sorted out the economy and the financial system. And this on top of a brutal route to office. I liked doing this post. His quotes aren't too fancy, they're practical and meaty and some of them are very funny. He must have been a very skilled judge of character. Wonder what his voice sounded like. "Some day I shall be President." No silver spoons here. Lincoln was born into a poor family on the western frontier. Mostly self-educated, he started out as a country lawyer, then became a state legislator and a one-term member of the House of Representatives...the rest was grind.

[this next bit is edited from Wikipedia] In 1859-60, he opposed the expansion of slavery in the US in his campaign debates and speeches, secured the Republican nomination and was elected president in 1860. Before Lincoln took office in March, seven southern slave states declared their secession and formed the Confederacy. When war began with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, Lincoln concentrated on both the military and political dimensions of the war effort, seeking to reunify the nation. He vigorously exercised unprecedented war powers, including the arrest and detention without trial of thousands of suspected secessionists. He prevented British recognition of the Confederacy by skillfully handling the Trent affair late in 1861. His efforts toward abolition include issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and encouraging Congress to propose what would become the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including commanding general Ulysses S. Grant. He brought leaders of various factions of his party into his cabinet and pressured them to cooperate...Each time a general failed, Lincoln substituted another until finally Grant succeeded in 1865.

As the leader of the moderate faction of the Republican party, Lincoln found his policies and personality were "blasted from all sides": Radical Republicansdemanded harsher treatment of the South, War Democrats desired more compromise, Copperheads despised him, and irreconcilable secessionists plotted his death. Politically, Lincoln fought back with patronage, pitted his opponents against each other, and appealed to the American people with his oratory. His Gettysburg Address of 1863 became the most quoted speech in American history. It was an iconic statement of America's dedication to the principles of nationalism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy.

At the close of the war, Lincoln held a moderate view of Reconstruction, seeking to reunite the nation speedily through a policy of generous reconciliation in the face of lingering and bitter divisiveness. But six days after the surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, Lincoln was assassinated by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be. I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence. Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. Don't worry when you are not recognised, but strive to be worthy of recognition.

I walk slowly, but I never walk backward. Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.

I can make more generals, but horses cost money. My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

Everybody likes a compliment. I will prepare and some day my chance will come.

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself. Whatever you are, be a good one.

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace. I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was. When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion. These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty. Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read. When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, "Truth is the daughter of Time." Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

He has a right to criticise, who has a heart to help. Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time. It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves. Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.

The Gettysburg address:

NB. read it out loud, don't just read it to yourself.

(short backstory - an amazing piece of oratory delivered to commemorate soldiers who fell in the war, ten sentences and two minutes in which he redefined the Civil War as a struggle not just for preserving the Union but as "a new birth of freedom", also compare it with Pericles' Funeral Speech if you like this sort of thing)

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

[[ps - please check out some of my other quote collections here - The Guy Quote]]

Freud was born in Berlin but his father, Ernst, moved the family to England in 1933 to skip the rise of Nazism. Grandson of Sigmund Freud, elder brother of Clement Freud (who told the world's funniest joke), he seems to have chosen to paint without much fuss or fanfare - it's what he was meant to do. He was one of a group of artists in Britain at the time, the "School of London", which along with Francis Bacon and a few others concentrated on figurative painting. He had a pretty crazy personal life (many lovers, at least 14 kids) - but there's plenty on that elsewhere.

Freud's subjects, who needed to make a very large and uncertain commitment of their time, were often the people in his life; friends, family, fellow painters, lovers, children. He said, "The subject matter is autobiographical, it's all to do with hope and memory and sensuality and involvement, really." However the titles were mostly anonymous, and the identity of the sitter not always disclosed; the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire had a portrait of one of Freud's daughters as a baby for several years before he mentioned who the model was.

In the 1970s Freud spent 4,000 hours on a series of paintings of his mother, about which art historian Lawrence Gowing observed "it is more than 300 years since a painter showed as directly and as visually his relationship with his mother. And that was Rembrandt." For me, the ones of his mum are the most emotive of all. She was in a deep depression at the time as Ernst had died, and you can instantly feel that mood in the room, almost disengaged (he couldn't paint her before because she was too animated and interested in him) as she stares into space.

A prodigious worker, Freud spent a huge amount of time on his paintings, and always needed to have the subject in the room. He'd work in five-hour sessions, and a single painting easily take over two thousand hours to complete. He'd start by drawing in charcoal, then paint a small area of the canvas, and gradually work outward from there. For a new sitter, he often started with the head as a means of "getting to know" the person, then painted the rest of the figure, eventually returning to the head as his comprehension of the model deepened. A section of canvas was intentionally left bare until the painting was finished, as a reminder that the work was in progress. The finished painting is an accumulation of richly worked layers of pigment, as well as months of intense observation.

It's crazy - the closer you get, the more abstract the paint becomes. I can't imagine how he could stare intently at someone's mouth, say, then go to the canvas and carve a green slash into a thick layer of paint on it, and yet, from a metre away, it looks exactly perfectly right in tone and texture and everything. Astonishing. And a lot of people talk about the distance between artist and subject, or the odd perspective (he often painted from above) and the inherent anger, but to be honest I didn't necessarily get that. To me it almost makes things more intimate, like he's there, but not necessarily intruding, a bit like Dad coming in and waking you up for school or something. There's a familiarity to it and passion, but I'm not sure anger is the word I'd use.

I also really like the way he does people's foreheads. Quotes below - and they're relevant for all types of artist, writers, singers, painters, the works.

[gallery]

"There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so."

"I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them."

"The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement. The picture is all he feels about it, all he thinks worth preserving of it, all he invests it with."

"A painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure."

"Now that I know what I want, I don't have to hold on to it quite so much."

"Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin."

"Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid."

"The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh."

"The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn."

"I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do."

"A painter's tastes must grow out of what so obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what it is suitable for him to do in art."

"The subject matter is autobiographical, it's all to do with hope and memory and sensuality and involvement really."

"The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real."

"I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be."

"What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince."

(To Martin Gayford about his portrait) “The picture of you has always been linked in my head with the one of the back end of the skewbald mare."

"I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen. Perhaps if painters did know how it was going to turn out they wouldn't bother actually to do it."

"The only secret I can claim to have is concentration, and that's something that can't be taught."

"I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness."

"The painting is always done very much with [the model's] co-operation. The problem with painting a nude, of course, is that it deepens the transaction. You can scrap a painting of someone's face and it imperils the sitter's self-esteem less than scrapping a painting of the whole naked body."

"I don't want any colour to be noticeable... I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent... Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid."

"The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. The effect that they make in space is as bound up with them as might be their colour or smell ... Therefore the painter must be as concerned with the air surrounding his subject as with the subject itself. It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out."

"A painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure."

(On Models) "And, since the model he faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture, since the picture is going to be there on its own, it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model."

A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it.

Actors are cattle.

I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.

Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.

Give them pleasure - the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.

I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it.

I'm not against the police; I'm just afraid of them.

In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.

In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.

Revenge is sweet and not fattening.

Self-plagiarism is style.

Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.

Television is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same thing pops up everytime.

There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.

There is nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.

When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say, 'Your salary.'

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[[ps - please check out some of my other quote collections here - The Guy Quote]]

I've blogged a few nuggets by Slovenian philosopher Zlavod Zizek a couple of times before (once on the hypocrisy of conscious consumerism, once on America's own problems with fundamentalists). Now it's time to listen to him on love.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg7qdowoemo&w=700]

The man

does not

hold back.

"Love feels like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures."

Hmm.

Anyway, if you liked that, you might like this article by Kathleen O'Dwyer, which goes into a little more detail on his thoughts on and attempts at unraveling the nature of love. Here's a taster from the intro:

The postmodern psychoanalyst-philosopher Slavoj Žižek is noted for his flamboyant style, his embrace of contradiction, and his often controversial exposure of the dualities, deceptions and disavowals which characterize contemporary culture. Reflecting on these aspects of Žižek’s work, his biographer Tony Myers states that “Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher. He is, however, no ordinary philosopher, for he thinks and writes in such a recklessly entertaining fashion, he constantly risks making philosophy enjoyable.” What makes Žižek different from ‘ordinary philosophers’, according to Myers, is his persistent sense of wonder and amazement, which he expresses in a limitless questioning of everything: “With all the guile of a child asking his parents why the sky is blue, Žižek questions everything that passes for wisdom about who we are, what we are doing and why we do it.” As an astute commentator on historical and contemporary disasters and difficulties, Žižek examines political, social and individual issues with a combination of philosophical reflection and cultural analysis. One such issue is the concept of neighbourly love.

Žižek’s analysis of the Christian injunction ‘to love one’s neighbour as oneself’ queries both its possibility and its expediency. His argument centres on the assertions that the universal love so promoted disavows that which is unlovable in human nature, and that love must in some sense be an autonomous decision (simply, that love cannot be commanded)...[read the rest here]

Charles Bukowski, born in 1920, began writing at a young age and was first published in the 1940s. Then Bukowksi gave up writing for the world of work and bars, not publishing, not writing, so the myth goes, for nearly twenty years. Ten of those years were spent roaming from odd job to odd roominghouse from the East coast to the West. The other ten years, Bukowski worked for the United States Postal Service in Los Angeles, a job that took no effort except for the strength to show up and the patience to perform mindless operations. During that time, his life bordered on insanity and death, two prevalent themes in his writing. According to his own myth making, Bukowski returned to writing the day that he quit the Postal Service, but his bibliography shows that indeed, he had been publishing several years before that. “Sex is interesting, but it's not totally important. I mean it's not even as important (physically) as excretion. A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement.”

“Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.”

“Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.”

“Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live”

“Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.”

“There is a time to stop reading, there is a time to STOP trying to WRITE, there is a time to kick the whole bloated sensation of ART out on its whore-ass.”

“There are worse things than being alone,”

“Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.”

“It's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.”

“To do a dull thing with style-now THAT'S what I call art.”

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”

“Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.”

Shoes by Charles Bukowski when you're young a pair of female high-heeled shoes just sitting alone in the closet can fire your bones; when you're old it's just a pair of shoes without anybody in them and just as well.

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[[ps - please check out some of my other quote collections here - The Guy Quote]]

Aristotle. In short: the man. The brainy man. Greek philosopher, student of Plato, teacher of Alexander the Great, and one of Western thought's most important figures. His writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy - morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics - and yet only a third of them survived. He covered physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. His understanding of physical sciences lasted until Isaac Newton's apple dropped, and we still talk about his philosophy today. There's an excellent Wikipedia on him here, but below are some of my favourite sayings of his.

Love is one soul in two bodies.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side. All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

All men by nature desire knowledge. All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

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[[ps - please check out some of my other quote collections here - The Guy Quote]]

I've been a big fan of Spike Milligan since I was about ten and I read Adolf Hitler: my part in his downfall. There was a hilarious passage in it about he and his comrades had leapt into the sea while on R&R and played with their submarines. It took me about five years to work out there might be a subtext. I just rather liked the idea of loads of soldiers pretending to be marine attack vessels. Born in India, and a jazz trumpeter and vocalist before the war, he was wounded at Monte Cassino and had a pretty tough time (I thoroughly recommend his books about the war).

After the war, he was one of the great comic characters around, with a wonderful sense of the absurd and surreal. As well as writing and performing on The Goon Show, he was a poet, artist, you name it. His healthy disregard for normalcy and rules in humour (and indeed life) a striking influence on me as a teen. Here are some of the things he has said.

All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy.

Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use earplugs?

Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion.

For ten years Caesar ruled with an iron hand. Then with a wooden foot, and finally with a piece of string.

I have the body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge.

I spent many years laughing at Harry Secombe's singing until somebody told me that it wasn't a joke.

I thought I'd begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine.

Is there anything worn under the kilt? No, it's all in perfect working order.

It was a perfect marriage. She didn't want to and he couldn't. It's all in the mind, you know.

Money couldn't buy friends, but you got a better class of enemy.

My Father had a profound influence on me, he was a lunatic.

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[[ps - please check out some of my other quote collections here - The Guy Quote]]

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A great interview. Very very very funny.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/PiJFx-R6HAc&w=700]

Spike, yes.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkOAUht3G5o&w=700]

Anarchy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl-UYWtx3Mo&w=700]

Stand-up. WAAAAAAAAY ahead of his time.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ps6Mh_o5NE&w=700]

To see a world in a grain of sand,And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. (from 'Auguries of Desire')

There's a good biography in Wikipedia, but here's the short story: Born in 1757, William worked in his father's hosiery shop until his talent for drawing became so obvious that he was apprenticed to an engraver at 14.

He worked on his first book, Songs of Innocence, with his wife Catherine. Blake engraved the words and pictures on copper plates (a method he claimed he received in a dream), while she coloured the plates and bound the books. It sold slowly during his lifetime. Songs of Experience (1794) was followed by Milton (1804-1808), and Jerusalem (1804-1820). He poured his whole being into his work. The lack of public recognition sent him into a severe depression which lasted from 1810-1817, and even his best friends thought he'd gone nuts.

Blake worked on a small scale. Most of his engravings are little more than inches in height, yet the detailed rendering is superb and exact. His work received far more public acclaim after his death. He died on August 12, 1827, and is buried in an unmarked grave at Bunhill Fields, London. Utterly unique, incredibly creative, a true original. Possibly the greatest artist our shores have ever produced.

A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.

Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.

Do what you will, this world's a fiction and is made up of contradiction.

Energy is an eternal delight, and he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.

Every harlot was a virgin once.

Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth. What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what is a theatre? are they two and not one? Can they exist separate? Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion. O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride!

I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.

Norman Mailer, 1923 - 2007. Novelist, journalist, playwright, screenwriter and film director. Innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism. Books like "The Fight", which covered Muhammed Ali vs George Foreman in 1975. Nothing if not bellicose, he was a political activist. His personal life was...well, he had six wives and nine children. In 1960 he stabbed his second wife Adele Morales with a penknife. As you'll see, there's not a lot of love lost between him and feminists. "Women think of being a man as a gift. It is a duty. Even making love can be a duty. A man has always got to get it up, and love isn't always enough."

"I'm hostile to men, I'm hostile to women, I'm hostile to cats, to poor cockroaches, I'm afraid of horses."

"In America all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that. We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell."

"What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil."

"There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be."

"Tough guys don't dance. You had better believe it."

"A little bit of rape is good for a man's soul." This he said during an address on Richard Milhous Nixon and Women's Liberation at the University of California at Berkeley. Then at the end of his speech he invited "all the feminists in the audience to please hiss." When a satisfying number obliged, he commented: "Obedient little bitches."

Jeepers!

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[[ps - please check out some of my other quote collections here - The Guy Quote]]