Alexander > Alexander's Quotes

“A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.”
― Rosalynn Carter

“She was disgusted with herself...and the disgust permanently cured her of suicide. Her piddling life did not deserve dramatic remedies.”
― Harry Mathews, Cigarettes

“All I do know, for certain, after 53 years in this business, is that writers who sincerely think that their language can represent reality ought to be plumbers.”
― Gilbert Sorrentino

“Most of my friends like words too well. They set them under the blinding light of the poem and try to extract every possible connotation from each of them, every temporary pun, every direct or indirect connection - as if a word could become an object by mere addition of consequences. Others pick up words from the streets, from their bars, from their offices and display them proudly in their poems as if they were shouting, "See what I have collected from the American language. Look at my butterflies, my stamps, my old shoes!" What does one do with all this crap?”
― Jack Spicer

“There are no birds in last year's nest.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.”
― Arthur Rimbaud

“History is an endless repetition of the wrong way of living”
― Lawrence Durrell

“I always run into strong women who are looking for weak men to dominate them.”
― Andy Warhol

“Everything's falling apart according to plan.”
― John Tottenham

“48. Imagine, for example, someone who fucks like a whore. Someone who seems good at it, professional. Someone you can still see fucking you, in the mirror, always in the mirror, crazy fucking about three feet away, in an apartment lit by blue light, never lit by daylight, this person is always fucking you from behind in blue light and you both always seem good at it, dedicated and lost unto it, as if there is no other activity on God’s given earth your bodies know how to do except fuck and be fucked like this, in this dim blue light, in this mirror. What do you call someone who fucks this way?”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“You're always haunted by the idea you're wasting your life.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“I'm going to end up like one of those old weirdos who lives in a network of tunnels burrowed through trash - yet I do not fear this.”
― Will Self