Evan MacNeil > Evan's Quotes

“It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“My task is to make you hear, to make you feel,and, above all, to make you see. That is all, and it is everything.”
― Joseph Conrad

“Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts”
― Jose Saramago

“Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.”
― José Saramago, The Double

“Liking is probably the best form of ownership, and ownership the worst form of liking.”
― José Saramago, The Tale of the Unknown Island

“I'll Die For Your Sins If You Live For mine.

”
― Jim Carroll, Fear of Dreaming: The Selected Poems

“Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.”
― Herman Hesse

“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. ”
― William S. Burroughs

“Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.”
― William S. Burroughs

“There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve.”
― William S. Burroughs

“If I had my way we'd sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes.”
― William S. Burroughs

“In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.”
― William Burroughs

“When you stop growing you start dying.”
― William S. Burroughs, Junky

“There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's

“During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme, and having once abandoned these familiar ways of thinking about fiction, totality of vision or structure was really all that remained.”
― John Hawkes

“I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme.”
― John Hawkes

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“If you understood everything I said, you’d be me”
― Miles Davis

“It’s like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of shit is that, but white people’s shit?”
― Miles Davis, Miles: The Autobiography

“Keep on truckin'”
― R. Crumb

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go”
― Herman Hesse

“I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.”
― J.G. Ballard

“Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.”
― J.G. Ballard

“If you want to understand a society, take a good look at the drugs it uses. And what can this tell you about American culture? Well, look at the drugs we use. Except for pharmaceutical poison, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates: Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Friday to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in.”
― Bill Hicks