Quotes

Alan Moore’s beard is my spirit animal.

Only American audiences ask me, “What should I do?” I’m never asked this in the third world. When you go to Turkey or Colombia or Brazil, they don’t ask you, “What should I do?” They tell you what they’re doing. These are poor, oppressed people, living under horrendous condition, and they would never dream of asking you what they should do. It’s only in high privileged cultures like ours that people ask this question. We can do anything. But people here are trained to believe that there are easy answers, and it doesn’t work that way. If you want to do something, you have to be dedicated and committed to it day after day. Educational programs, organizing, activism. That’s the way things change. You want a magic key, so you can go back to watching television tomorrow? It doesn’t exist.

I saw a slogan on a guy’s car, it said “Proud to be an American.” And I thought “Well, what the fuck does that mean?” You see, I’ve never understood national pride and I’ve never understood ethnic pride. When I was a kid, I would go to the Saint Patrick’s Day parade and I would notice that they sold a button that said “Proud to be Irish.” And I could never understand that because I knew that on Columbus Day, they sold a different button that said “Proud to be Italian.” Then came black pride and Puerto Rican pride and I could never understand ethnic or national pride because to me, pride should be reserved for something you achieve or attain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth. Being Irish isn’t a skill, it’s a fucking genetic accident. You wouldn’t say “I’m proud to be 5’11”.” So why the fuck would you be proud to be Irish or Italian or American or anything? If you’re happy with it, that’s fine, put that on your car. “Happy to be American.” Be happy, don’t be proud.

If there’s one leading principle which unifies them, it’s a simple one. It’s based on the assumption that any structure of authority and domination has to justify itself- none of them are self-justifying. Whether they’re in individual relations, or international affairs, or the workplace, or whatever- they have a burden of proof to bear, and if they can’t bear that burden (which they usually can’t), they’re illegitimate and should be dismantled and replaced by alternative structures which are free and participatory and are not based on authoritarian systems.

Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk.

From birth to death, from Monday to Monday, from morning to evening — all activities are routinized, and prefabricated. How should a man caught in this net of routine not forget that he is a man, a unique individual, one who is given only this one chance of living, with hopes and disappointments, with sorrow and fear, with the longing for love and the dread of the nothing and of separateness?

In Voudon, the loa are also known as “the Divine Horsemen” because of their special relationship to their worshippers; a person who becomes possessed is said to be “mounted by the loa” and is in a sense the “horse” during the while.

When you see someone behaving badly, something that upsets you, someone that you hate, or something that drives you crazy, you must realize that all of these things bother you and deplete your energy only because of the way you have decided to label them. None of these things really means any­thing. Your enemy is only your enemy because you have made him or her so. The petty, evil acts of others seem petty and evil because your mind allows the concepts of pettiness and evil to hold it prisoner. In reality, the actions of others are merely actions. The causes and effects of those actions are beyond your conscious ability to know. The correctness or incorrectness of others ’ actions or behaviors (including the whole universe) can only be a poorly con­structed judgment on your part. Fretting and moaning about
others is a waste of the little time that you have on Earth . You
will not change them – you can only change yourself. By
changing, you may even discover that what once seemed an
incomprehen sible act of evil is actually a necessary and essential part of the universal plan.
When you become dispassionate toward the world, forgetting those things you perceive to be evil, the evils and enemies of your life disappear like the phantoms that they are. What’s more, you are rejuvenated. No longer wasting your energy on illusion­ary grievances, anger, and hatred, a new world of beauty and power opens up before you.
You are responsible for your actions, and no others, and
concerning yourself with another person’s life makes you subject to the advances of a million useless demons and phan­tasms of hatred and delusion.
You are a force of nature, a self-luminous star as bright
and potent as the Sun, but only when you move as effortless­ly as the Sun can you know your own wonder. Then, every
step will be in perfect joy, and every path will lead to perfect happiness.

Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called ‘the love of your fate.’ Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, ‘This is what I need.’ It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment—not discouragement—you will find the strength is there. Any disaster that you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.

Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.

If they want to know if prostitutes are positive, they should test the vice cops.