There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.

You were always weird but I never had to hold you by the edges like I do now

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

"Oh, and do you remember.” —she added "a conversation we had once about driving a car?"

"Why not exactly."

"You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride."

"I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor."

She didn’t answer.

Angry, and in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.

...

I'm obsessed by Time Magazine. 
I read it every week. 
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. 
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. 
It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-
men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America. 
I am talking to myself again.

...

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin' this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die

Now, for ten years we've been on our own
And moss grows fat on a rolling stone
But, that's not how it used to be...

When the jester sang for the king and queen
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and me

today, that jester won the nobel prize for literature. well deserved.

here are my thoughts on his work from a previous post a year ago.

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

I would like government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved.

if the above quote makes very little grammatical sense, h.l. mencken would agree with you.

He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash

he also wasn't a fan of his supporters.

More, it is a stump speech addressed to the sort of audience that the speaker has been used to all of his life, to wit, an audience of small town yokels, of low political serfs, or morons scarcely able to understand a word of more than two syllables, and wholly able to pursue a logical idea for more than two centimeters.

Such imbeciles do not want ideas—that is, new ideas, ideas that are unfamiliar, ideas that challenge their attention. What they want is simply a gaudy series of platitudes, of sonorous nonsense driven home with gestures. As I say, they can’t understand many words of more than two syllables, but that is not saying that they do not esteem such words. On the contrary, they like them and demand them. The roll of incomprehensible polysyllables enchants them. They like phrases which thunder like salvos of artillery. Let that thunder sound, and they take all the rest on trust. If a sentence begins furiously and then peters out into fatuity, they are still satisfied. If a phrase has a punch in it, they do not ask that it also have a meaning. If a word slips off the tongue like a ship going down the ways, they are content and applaud it and wait for the next.

A monk asked Kegon, "How does an enlightened one return to the ordinary world?"

Kegon replied, "A broken mirror never reflects again; fallen flowers never go back to the old branches."

my favorite West Wing scene

"You know I run a small academy for lobsters like this one. We stress tough love, daily chores and the like."

"No! We’re not sending the lobster away to some snobby boarding school."

"Yarr, I understand. It’s hard to let go. Tell me this then, do you have any spare change?"

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

Today's issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston's job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones...

...It referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes. As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a 'categorical pledge' were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April...

But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another...

...For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at one-hundred-and-forty-five million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than one-hundred-and-forty-five millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all.

Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain."

I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.

When you say, "I am a person," the word person is from the drama. When you open a play script and see the list of the actors, this is the dramatis personae, the persons of the drama. The word person in Latin is per-sona, meaning "through sound," or something through which sound comes; the persona in Greek or Roman drama was the mask worn by the actors. and because they acted on an open-air stage, the mask's mouth was shaped like a small megaphone that would project the sound. So the person is the mask. Isn't it funny how we have forgotten that?

...But if you forget that you are the actor, and think you are the person, you have been taken in by your own role.

I am putting makeup on empty space 
all patinas convening on empty space 
rouge blushing on empty space 
I am putting makeup on empty space 
pasting eyelashes on empty space 
painting the eyebrows of empty space 
piling creams on empty space 
painting the phenomenal world 
I am hanging ornaments on empty space 
gold clips, lacquer combs, plastic hairpins on empty space 
I am sticking wire pins into empty space 
I pour words over empty space, enthrall the empty space 
packing, stuffing jamming empty space 
spinning necklaces around empty space 
Fancy this, imagine this: painting the phenomenal world 
bangles on wrists 
pendants hung on empty space 
I am putting my memory into empty space 
undressing you 
hanging the wrinkled clothes on a nail 
hanging the green coat on a nail 
dancing in the evening it ended with dancing in the evening 
I am still thinking about putting makeup on empty space 
I want to scare you: the hanging night, the drifting night, 
the moaning night, daughter of troubled sleep I want to scare you 
you 
I bind as far as cold day goes 
I bind the power of 20 husky men 
I bind the seductive colorful women, all of them 
I bind the massive rock 
I bind the hanging night, the drifting night, the 
moaning night, daughter of troubled sleep 
I am binding my debts, I magnetize the phone bill 
bind the root of my pointed tongue 
I cup my hands in water, splash water on empty space 
water drunk by empty space 
Look what thoughts will do   Look what words will do 
from nothing to the face 
from nothing to the root of the tongue 
from nothing to speaking of empty space 
I bind the ash tree 
I bind the yew 
I bind the willow 
I bind uranium 
I bind the uneconomical unrenewable energy of uranium 
dash uranium to empty space 
I bind the color red I seduce the color red to empty space 
I put the sunset in empty space 
I take the blue of his eyes and make an offering to empty space 
renewable blue 
I take the green of everything coming to life, it grows & 
climbs into empty space 
I put the white of the snow at the foot of empty space 
I clasp the yellow of the cat's eyes sitting in the 
black space I clasp them to my heart, empty space 
I want the brown of this floor to rise up into empty space 
Take the floor apart to find the brown, 
bind it up again under spell of empty space 
I want to take this old wall apart I am rich in my mind thinking 
of this, I am thinking of putting makeup on empty space 
Everything crumbles around empty space 
the thin dry weed crumbles, the milkweed is blown into empty space 
I bind the stars reflected in your eye 
from nothing to these typing fingers 
from nothing to the legs of the elk 
from nothing to the neck of the deer 
from nothing to porcelain teeth 
from nothing to the fine stand of pine in the forest 
I kept it going when I put the water on 
when I let the water run 
sweeping together in empty space 
There is a better way to say empty space 
Turn yourself inside out and you might disappear 
you have a new definition in empty space 
What I like about impermanence is the clash 
of my big body with empty space 
I am putting the floor back together again 
I am rebuilding the wall 
I am slapping mortar on bricks 
I am fastening the machine together with delicate wire 
There is no eternal thread, maybe there is thread of pure gold 
I am starting to sing inside about the empty space 
there is some new detail every time 
I am taping the picture I love so well on the wall: 
moonless black night beyond country-plaid curtains 
everything illuminated out of empty space 
I hang the black linen dress on my body 
the hanging night, the drifting night, the moaning night 
daughter of troubled sleep 
This occurs to me 
I hang up a mirror to catch stars, everything occurs to me out in the 
night in my skull of empty space 
I go outside in starry ice 
I build up the house again in memory of empty space 
This occurs to me about empty space 
that it is nevered to be mentioned again 
Fancy this 
imagine this 
painting the phenomenal world 
there's talk of dressing the body with strange adornments 
to remind you of a vow to empty space 
there's talk of the discourse in your mind like a silkworm 
I wish to venture into a not-chiseled place 
I pour sand on the ground 
Objects and vehicles emerge from the fog 
the canyon is dangerous tonight 
suddenly there are warning lights 
The patrol is helpful in the manner of guiding 
there is talk of slowing down 
there is talk of a feminine deity 
I bind her with a briar 
I bind with the tooth of a tiger 
I bind with my quartz crystal 
I magnetize the worlds 
I cover myself with jewels 
I drink amrita 
there is some new detail 
there is a spangle on her shoe 
there is a stud on her boot 
the tires are studded for the difficult climb 
I put my hands to my face 
I am putting makeup on empty space 
I wanted to scare you with the night that scared me 
the drifting night, the moaning night 
Someone was always intruding to make you forget empty space 
you put it all on 
you paint your nails 
you put on scarves 
all the time adorning empty space 
Whatever-your-name-is I tell you “empty space” 
with your fictions with dancing come around to it 
with your funny way of singing come around to it 
with your smiling come to it 
with your enormous retinue & accumulation come around to it 
with your extras come round to it 
with your good fortune, with your lazy fortune come round to it 
when you look most like a bird, that is the time to come around to it 
when you are cheating, come to it 
when you are in your anguished head 
when you are not sensible 
when you are insisting on the 
praise from many tongues 
It begins with the root of the tongue 
it begins with the root of the heart 
there is a spinal cord of wind 
singing & moaning in empty space 

i didn't know where to cut this one for just an excerpt. it's all one mass, snowballing into the next.

...For “All I Need,” Mr. Greenwood said, he wanted to recapture the white noise generated by a band playing loudly in a room, when “all this chaos kicks up.”

On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.