More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
And that is true of soldiers. They are in fact babies. They are not movie stars.
It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know.
Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.
The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.
Starting when I was only twelve years old, I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls.
But I am now eighty-two. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.
I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable.
I am, of course, notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.
Do you know what a Luddite is? A person who hates newfangled contraptions.
What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do.
We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.
No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.
That war only made billionaires out of millionaires. Today’s war is making trillionaires out of billionaires. Now I call that progress.
I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren.
It was still possible to make horror and grief in wartime seem almost beautiful. Americans could still have illusions of honor and dignity when they thought of war.
Human beings have had to guess about almost everything for the past million years or so.
the guessers often gave us the illusion that bad luck and good luck were understandable and could somehow be dealt with intelligently and effectively. Without that illusion, we all might have surrendered long ago.
And if you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington, D.C.
War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the First World War so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun.
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.
The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.
But I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere.
By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society.
“Welcome to Earth, young man,” I said. “It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, Joe, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of: Goddamn it, Joe, you’ve got to be kind!”
The bad news is that the Martians have landed in New York City and are staying at the Waldorf Astoria. The good news is that they only eat homeless men, women, and children of all colors, and they pee gasoline.
I’m simply along for the ride to see what happens to this body and this brain of mine.
Yes, this planet is in a terrible mess. But it has always been a mess. There have never been any “Good Old Days,” there have just been days.
When I got home from the Second World War, my Uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he said, “You’re a man now.” So I killed him. Not really, but I certainly felt like doing it.
He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy.
And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
