Ping Spier > Ping's Quotes

“The best writers tend to look the roughest in photos. At least that's the excuse I use for why I look so bad in mine.”
― R.D. Ronald

“Numbers are eternal while everything else is perishable; they are of the nature not of matter, but of mind; they permit mental operations of the most surprising and delightful kind without reference to the coarse external world of the senses-which is how the divine mind must be supposed to operate. The ecstatic contemplation of geometrical forms and mathematical laws is therefore the most effective means of purging the soul of earthly passion, and the principle link between man and divinity.”
― Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe

“Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

“She asked if we were calm enough for her to take off the cuffs, and McMurphy nodded. He had slumped over with his head hung and his elbows between his knees and looked completely exhausted--it hadn't occurred to me that it was just as hard for him to stand straight as it was for me.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“Women disappear all the time. Nobody misses them. Immigrants. Whores from Russia. Thousands of people pass through Sweden every year.”
― Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

“..sex wasn’t just about two people getting naked and tangled up together. A lot of other things were involved, things that make you feel so good you forget who you are, and things that feel so creepy you literally get goose bumps, and things you hold so dear you’re afraid to go to sleep, and things that make you so happy you want to bounce up and down—layer after layer of things like that, all mixed up into a sticky mess with the blood and sweat and love juice.”
― Ryū Murakami, Popular Hits of the Showa Era

“Strange how things turn out. Two birds, one stone and all that.' McBlane chuckled at his own impromptu joke. 'But things have worked out for the best and now we all get to work together,' he said, and a smile spread across his face as easy as a politician's lie.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose “story” “plot” “continuity”... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer...”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

“I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.”
― Georges Bataille, Violent Silence: Celebrating Georges Bataille

“You journalists bulldoze life's mysteries, ignorant of what you're so ruthlessly turning up.”
― Marisha Pessl, Night Film

“They thought to use and shame me but I win out by nature, because a true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born.”
― Katherine Dunn, Geek Love

“Why did we become blind, I don't know, perhaps one day we'll find out, Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, do, I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.”
― Jose Saramago

“I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over.”
― Henry Miller

“Nature makes sense, children. Logical, concise, direct. It's humanity that's fucked it all up.”
― Kelly Braffet, Josie and Jack

“Oba-sans, to put it in somewhat difficult terms, are life-forms that have stopped evolving. And anyone can turn into an Oba-san. Young women, of course, but even young men, even middle-aged men —even children. You turn into an Oba-san the instant you lose the will to evolve.”
― Ryū Murakami, Popular Hits of the Showa Era

“You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“in Parsifal: "You see, my son, here time turns into space.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS