David Gordon > Quotes

“Real readers poison themselves with words. They close each book as though climbing, reborn, from a tomb.”
― David Gordon, White Tiger on Snow Mountain

“Anyway, that's all art school is. A big clusterfuck for rich poseurs. Who the fuck needs it? But it's a system, right? You have to go to the art schools to get into the galleries, to learn how to talk that bullshit. That's what they're learning, to talk bullshit.

The Serialist
David Gordon”
― David Gordon, The Serialist

“But unlike the person with exquisite taste in painting or perfume, the movie nerd is classless as well. Grasping the genius of Russ Meyer or George Romero or Herschell Gordon Lewis carries no cultural cachet and gets no one laid, believe me.”
― David Gordon, Mystery Girl

“My misgivings about being in business with a criminal had to do with, oh I don’t know, finding a severed head in the safe, not that you’d be moping about here wanting to discuss love of all things. I mean really.”
― David Gordon, The Pigeon

“He tried to draw a woman and it looked like a house. He tried to draw a man and it looked like a really old house. He tried to draw a house and it looked like a fucked-up cow.”
― David Gordon, The Amateur

“Sex and desire is the one realm of life where justice is not only impossible, it’s inconceivable.”
― David Gordon, White Tiger on Snow Mountain

“What are other people to us? Material. The stuff of our work. Whom do we love more, the girl or the portrait, the thing we've made of her? We artists, we're not quite human, are we? We love no one.”
― David Gordon, The Serialist

“Everything you know and dream of is nothing, not even a speck of what is. The life of even the tiniest ant is as infinitely complex as a man’s and the life of a man is like a god’s. And even this vast whole is enclosed in my endlessness like the faintest glimmer of the first thought on the dawn of the first day of creation. Everything is still possible. You have not yet begun to live.”
― David Gordon, White Tiger on Snow Mountain

“I did not believe in god, but I was beginning to believe in miracles, miracles and whatever is the opposite of miracles, terrible wonders. Yes, this life is a whirlwind, and what can guide us through it? Not our eyes, not our ears, not our brain. What difference does it make what we believe?”
― David Gordon, White Tiger on Snow Mountain

“If you had no insurance or steady health care, if you owned no property or portfolio, if you had no voice in politics and didn’t see your reality reflected in the media or on TV, if you realized, whether suddenly or as a given from birth, that the social safety net, the assurance of protection and support that society offered, was not spread to catch you, or was so full of holes that it was useless, then you might not feel obliged to hold up your end of the deal either. If you felt the law was not there for you, then you might not be all that inclined to obey it. The rules of the game become meaningless when you realize the game is rigged.”
― David Gordon, The Hard Stuff

“When I read, the words on the page replace the voice in my head and I cease, for a little while, to be me, or at least to be so painfully aware of being me.”
― David Gordon, The Serialist

“This was a new low, combining the perverse and the pathetic. Perthetic!”
― David Gordon, The Serialist

“Poetry is anything you read out loud alone.”
― David Gordon, White Tiger on Snow Mountain

“Once, on a sleepless night, I elaborated a whole theory of art predicated on simply reminding the ever-forgetful mind of the most basic truths: We float in water and revolve around the sun. We are born out of a woman's body and are made of meat and bone. One day, pretty soon, we will die.”
― David Gordon, The Serialist

“I tend to stumble through life as if lost in a deep forest with an out-of-date map that I can't figure out how to fold. The trees all look familiar, animals are making scary sounds in the bushes and the sandwich in my bag isn't what I ordered. No doubt I'm not alone in this.”
― David Gordon, The Serialist

“This is the only boundary that nature herself imposes on us, the limitations on what we can accomplish, in space and time, with one body and one life.”
― David Gordon, The Serialist

“When people ask what I do, I say: “I’m a teacher.” or: “I proofread legal documents.” or: “I hand out jalapeño humus dip at Trader Joe’s.” I say, to myself, mostly: “I’m alive, motherfucker. What else do you want?" ”
― David Gordon, White Tiger on Snow Mountain