Born on July 5 — Quotes

The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head.

Poetry is indispensable — if I only knew what for.

Do we realise how that hastily-ordered ban [on the book The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie] has changed India forever? .... When the Government promptly submitted to this illiterate hysteria, it convinced [Hindus] that secularism had become a code phrase for Muslim appeasement.

Many new martyrs have been added during this heavy crisis that has torn Syria apart since 2011. Silent prayers filled with tears find refuge in the ultimate meaning of Christian witness, the First Martyr, our ultimate Wall of Lamentation, our only Hope.

That pile of paper on his left side went on living like the watch on a dead soldier’s wrist.

Art is science made clear.

Never in the two thousand year history of the Church has it occurred that a more modern form of celebrating the liturgy leaves the previous form out of use, in a sort of tacit derogation.

Tearing out the old, icky stuff is hard, it's messy—ouch!" He dropped the hammer from his right hand and shook his left. "Ouch!" He danced around for a minute before regaining his composure, picking up the hammer and nail again, then looked at her straight-faced. "And at times it's downright painful. But you've got to be willing to go through the process if you really want to see a true change. Anything less is just a cover-up.

My hair has always grown in all directions and my teeth too and my beard. My nerves and my soul must surely grow in the same way. That is what makes me incomprehensible to those who grow all in one direction and are incapable of imagining a hay-stack. It is this that baffles those who could rid me of this legendary leprosy. They do not know how to take me.
This organic disorder is a safeguard for me because it keeps the thoughtless at distance. I also get certain advantages from it. It gives me diversity, contrast, a quickness in leaning to one side or the other as this or that object invites me, and in regaining my balance.

The trouble about the Académie is that by the time they get around to electing us to a seat, we really need a bed.

The obstinate miner
of the void
exploits
his fertile mine

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential — as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.

Oh, for that matter you must look carefully how in every region of our country the map looks completely different. Not only the pastures have different shades, but the cows are different, yes even the people have, as it were, adopted the character of the soil [where] they were born and raised. That is so evident, that when I still stayed with Roelofs in Brussels [early 1860's] and we used to go to Holland to make our studies in the beautiful part of the season, coming home Roelofs didn't have to tell me where he had been. I recognized it in his work and one by one I called him the spots of our homeland [The Netherlands], where he had made sketches of the countryside and its residents during his study trip. (translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek)

The Gaza sniper deserves a decoration, and the photographer a demerit.

When I make a film, it is a sleep in which I am dreaming.