John

“Overnight, punk had become as stupid as everything else. This wonderful vital force that was articulated by the music was really about corrupting every form—it was about advocating kids to not wait to be told what to do, but make life up for themselves, it was about trying to get people to use their imaginations again, it was about not being perfect, it was about saying it was okay to be amateurish and funny, that real creativity came out of making a mess, it was about working with what you got in front of you and turning everything embarrassing, awful, and stupid in your life to your advantage.”
― Legs McNeil, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

“Oh, let everything pass and be forgotten—and again in two hundred years’ time an ambitious failure will vent his frustration on the simpletons dreaming of a good life (that is if there does not come my kingdom, where everyone keeps to himself and there is no equality and no authorities—but if you don’t want it, I don’t insist and don’t care).”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Someone had said, and Wilhelm agreed with the saying, that in Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn’t tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“Meanwhile, ominously, the education denied them now proceeded, as enough of them saw through to how deep, how empty was their ignorance.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Vineland