R.J. Lawrence Quotes

It is strongly suspected that a NEWTON or SHAKESPEARE excels other mortals only by a more ample development of the anterior cerebral lobes, by having an extra inch of brain in the right place.

One could laugh at the world better if it didn't mix tender kindliness with its brutality.

I really liked Carrie a lot. That was one of Brian De Palma's best movies.

If you cut a thing up, of course it will smell. Hence, nothing raises such an infernal stink at last, as human psychology.

The cocktail party - as the name itself indicates - was originally invented by dogs. They are simply bottom-sniffings raised to the rank of formal ceremonies.

I am only half there when I am ill, and so there is only half a man to suffer. To suffer in one's whole self is so great a violation, that it is not to be endured.

The true artist doesn't substitute immorality for morality. On the contrary, he always substitutes a finer morality for a grosser one.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.

There's been an increase in the number of Iraqis in training, but more Americans are dying and violence is increasing.

This is still a man's profession, with a lot of men who intellectually and emotionally have not accepted that the military could be women's work.

The government shouldn't run anything, because it cannot run anything.

A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.

We should tackle reality in a slightly jokey way, otherwise we miss its point.

The acrid scents of autumn, Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear

Art is a form of supremely delicate awareness and atonement — meaning atoneness, the state of being at one with the object.

A man will be effective to the degree that he is able to concentrate! Concentration is not basically a mode of doing but above all a mode of Being.

A strange thing — nails will hold a building together, but there's nothing better for taking a man apart.

Sometime, It's easier to love someone with flaws you can forgive in return for them forgiving yours.

If we lose our sanity ... We can but howl the lugubrious howl of idiots, the howl of the utterly lost howling their nowhereness.

It is so much more difficult to live with one's body than with one's soul. One's body is so much more exacting: what it won't have it won't have, and nothing can make bitter into sweet.

The upshot was, my paintings must burn that English artists might finally learn.

I don't live to eat, I eat to live.

A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense.

Thought is a man in his wholeness, wholly attending.

Four years and everything was the same, except me.

Oh build your ship of death. Oh build it! For you will need it. For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.

Freedom is about stopping the past.

Religion is simply art bastardized out of all recognition.

And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going.

In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt.

Some may not like the Constitution's requirements, but that doesn't make the Constitution a pirate's charter.

There's a road to hell that is paved with good intentions but it's a long route. The quicker path is paved with the kind of ignorance that clever men who just don't want to know are best at.

The continual linking of the notions of terrorist and terrorism with Muslims and the Middle East is, essentially, an act of propaganda that cannot help but promote "Islamophobia."

By the time Apple's Macintosh operating system finally falls into the public domain, there will be no machine that could possibly run it. The term of copyright for software is effectively unlimited.

I'll do my life work, sticking up for the love between man and woman.

It only takes one match to ignite a haystack, or one remark to fire a mind.

We always build on the past; the past always tries to stop us.

Americans have been selling this view around the world: that progress comes from perfect protection of intellectual property.

A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid.

Now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the inability to know what is protected and what is not protected becomes a huge and obvious burden on the creative process.

Execution is the job of the business leader.

While the creative works from the 16th century can still be accessed and used by others, the data in some software programs from the 1990s is already inaccessible.

I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts the result of my dreams.

Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time scale so short that you can't even measure them.

Metaphysical speculation is independent of the physical validity of the Big Bang itself and is irrelevant to our understanding of it.

It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.

Art like life is an open secret.

It was a defeat, resorting to crude threats in a game of subtlety, but sometimes one must sacrifice a battle to win the war.

I want everything I do to have humor in it, because it seems to me that all of life has that.