Terrence > Terrence's Quotes

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
― Mark Twain

“Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.”
― Robert Orben

“Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.”
― George Burns

“The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal", then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal.”
― John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage

“Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.”
― Henry Kissinger

“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.”
― Henry Winkler

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
― Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades

“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

“All religions are true but none are literal.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Love is the world's infinite mutability; lies, hatred, murder even, are all knit up in it; it is the inevitable blossoming of its opposites, a magnificent rose smelling faintly of blood.”
― Tony Kushner, The Illusion

“The dreams of the left are always beautiful - the imagining of a better world, the damnation of the present one. This faith, this luminescent anger - these are worthy of being called human. These are the Beautiful that an age produces.”
― Tony Kushner

“I never really feel that I’m stuck. I actually think that people are never stuck, there’s no such thing as writers block, I think that theres terror that can silence you. But if you can think of it as a dynamic thing I mean a writers block, it’s a paralysis an immobility and the thing that has immobilized you is a very powerful force. Immobility is itself an act, it’s a choice. It can sometimes take as much energy to remain immobile as it does to be mobile. And if you think of it in a dynamic way then it’d freeze you from the sense that at some point your talent will simply abandon you and you’re just a vacant shell with nothing to say, I don’t think that ever really happens. But I think that terror, bad experience, trauma and so on can absolutely silence you.”
― Tony Kushner

“The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deliberate.”
― Tony Kushner, Perestroika

“In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead.”
― Tony Kushner, Perestroika

“Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change?

Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice.

God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching.

Harper: And then up you get. And walk around.

Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.

Harper: That's how people change.”
― Tony Kushner, Angels in America

“It isn't easy, it doesn't count if it's easy, it's the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet.”
― Tony Kushner, Millennium Approaches

“All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?”
― Banksy, Wall and Piece

“Here is a lesson in creative writing.

First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

And I realize some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding.

For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I'm kidding.

We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding.

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“A line is a dot that went for a walk.”
― Paul Klee

“The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Faith is only a word, embroidered.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“It's hard to imagine "Fuck Jews" as being anything other than a statement of anti-Semitism.”
― Bari Weiss, How to Fight Anti-Semitism

“He who thinks he knows, doesn't know. He who knows that he doesn't know, knows.”
― Joseph Campbell