Lisa Mason Quotes

What was that teacher trying to do?
That teacher was trying to break her spirit.
But why would school do that? So you could become someone like her parents and believe in the things they believe in. So you won’t believe in the things they don’t believe in. And believe you’re a happy person whose life has meaning. So you will go to your job and do whatever gross thing someone tells you to do and get drunk on Friday and Saturday nights and pay taxes and bills. That’s why.

By the time people could speak about mandatory population control in a rational way, it was too late.

Prostitution has little to do with morality, and everything to do with poverty.

What is the value of a life when the world is burdened with twelve billion people?

Acid," says the guy with the eyes, "raises your powers of integration so that everything is important." "Acid," says Chiron, "lowers your powers of discrimination so that everything seems important.

Junk does that. Junk is a forge. You enter the fire and come out twisted.

When you finally cash it in Out in Frisco;
And you end this life of sin Out in Frisco;
They will gently toll a bell,
Plant your carcass in a dell,
There’s no need to go to hell, You’re in Frisco.

Consider impact before you consider benefit.

What is destiny for any human being? What becomes of probabilities that collapse out of the timeline? Does destiny depend on who witnesses?

The future survives because people care. Live responsibly or die.

I have not told the police about it. Every member of the police department I have encountered during my stay in San Francisco has been nearly as surly and intractable as my rapist friend, because I look like a hippie. Each time I attempted to explain myself I was rebuffed or threatened.
From this experience I am tempted to draw an odd analogy: under stress, neither the policeman nor the rapist allows an opportunity for rational communication. Each one relies on violence to make to make his impression. This is not an accident, but, rather evidence of a widespread sickness. When will violence stop long enough for communication to begin? On second thought, perhaps I am doing the police department a grave disservice in not attempting to put them in contact with the rapist. Maybe, with just a little mind-bending, that rapist would make a damned good cop, and both could swagger together, true soul brothers, under the many-colored cloak of Fascism.

He uncorks the absinthe, pours three rounds.…
“After the first glass you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. After the third, you see things as they really are, which is the most horrible thing in the world.”

Since they were little, wishing on the first star of the evening, they both understood this: the most exciting game in life is to invent yourself.

If women go into politics, they’ll wind up as bad as men.

Boredom," he says, "is the province of the unimaginative soul.