“Whereas in the twentieth century, there was a distinction between men and women, in the twenty-first century the lines of gender will become more and more blurred.”
― The Last Word: An Autobiography
― The Last Word: An Autobiography
“Now I’ve done and said all I can do and say. I’ve come to the end of my personality, and now if I want anything it’s peace, quiet. The ability, the opportunity to stay in my room and just stagger on. I suppose what I want, in a way, is death.”
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“If you're on a tightrope, when you first set off you don't know how much play there is in the rope. But when you get into the middle, between the ages of twenty and forty, the thing rocks like mad and it's too late to go back, even to to look back. But if you go on as carefully as you can, you see the other platform and then you just make a dash for it, not bothering what the audience thinks, or waving your arms, or looking looking dangerous and difficult and prodigious. What you see when you get to the other side is, in fact, the edge of your coffin. And you get into it, and you lie down, and you think; my cuffs are frayed, I haven't written to my mother and all those other things. And then you think; it doesn't matter. Because I'm dead. And this is a message of hope. It will come to an end. It will come, we cannot be blamed for it and we shall be free.”
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“If you're on a tightrope, when you first set off you don't know how much play there is in the rope. But when you get into the middle, between the ages of twenty and forty, the thing rocks like mad and it's too late to go back, even to to look back. But if you go on as carefully as you can, you see the other platform and then you just make a dash for it, not bothering what the audience thinks, or waving your arms, or looking dangerous and difficult and prodigious. What you see when you get to the other side is, in fact, the edge of your coffin. And you get into it, and you lie down, and you think; my cuffs are frayed, I haven't written to my mother and all those other things. And then you think; it doesn't matter. Because I'm dead. And this is a message of hope. It will come to an end. It will come, we cannot be blamed for it and we shall be free”
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“You must make small steps into the air of being yourself. Find yourself in an empty landscape, build your character, and then spend the rest of your life demonstrating it.”
― The Last Word: An Autobiography
― The Last Word: An Autobiography
Paul’s 2025 Year in Books
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