Striving for a more tolerable community

I always wanna start conversations that way, just get right to the talking-let’s talk about some shit. It’s always disappointing to me when people talk about the weather, cause that means you really didn’t wanna talk about anything. And ya’ know I was in my elevator today, I got in my elevator and one of my neighbors got on, I don’t know his name, I’ll die not knowing his name, but uh we’re on the elevator so we look at each other and there’s that moment, there’s always that moment where like maybe something could happen; there’s a little potential in that moment. And you wait and you go ehhhh, it’s cold. Aw fuck, nothing happened. Like you just, ya’ just cop out and you just say meaningless shit. You have a competition of how stupid you can be, “Aw, I can’t believe 8 months ago it was 50 degrees out.” But what if you didn’t do that, what if you didn’t cop out, what if you just let the moment linger, don’t go to the weather and just maybe you could have a real moment…you just stand there and look at each other, “I haven’t talked to my dad in 8 years.

The only way to learn stuff is by failing; all this I have learned by having bad times. You have to be willing to have a bad time. People that need to feel like a star and like they’re succeeding every time will never get better.

I don’t mind feeling sad. Sadness is a lucky thing to feel. I have the same amount of happy and sad as anybody else. I just don’t mind the sad part as much; it’s amazing to have those feelings. I’ve always felt that way. I think that looking at how random and punishing life can be, it’s a privilege.

Our real problem is what is the goal of education? Are we forming children who are only capable of learning what is already known? Or should we try to develop creative and innovative minds capable of discovery from the preschool age on through life?

Your worst enemy…was your own nervous system. At any moment the tension was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.

The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.

Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.

Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.

So it goes.

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

Satan had a serpent give Eve the apple. Eve took a bite and handed it to Adam. He took a bite, and then they fucked.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

I was interested in everything and committed to nothing.