John Perkins > John's Quotes

“A Brief for the Defense

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace
of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.”
― Jack Gilbert, Collected Poems

“Character actor' is a technical term denoting a clever stage performer who cannot act, and therefore makes an elaborate study of the disguises and stage tricks by which acting can be grotesquely simulated.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays, volume 1

“Betrothed"

We get to be alone by time, by luck,
or by misadventure.”
― Jack Gilbert, Collected Poems

“How we lavish our money and worship on Shakespeare without in the least knowing why!”
― George Bernard Shaw

“The Spirit and the Soul"

The spirit dances, comes and goes. But the soul
is nailed to us like lentils and fatty bacon lodged
under the ribs.”
― Jack Gilbert, Collected Poems

“Another Grandfather"

Every generation tells
of how the good world died.”
― Jack Gilbert, Collected Poems

“The Great Fires"

Love is apart from all things. …

Love allows us to walk
in the sweet music of our particular heart.”
― Jack Gilbert

“Vital art comes always from a cross between art and life: art being of one sex only, and quite sterile by itself. Such a cross is always possible; for though the artist may not have the capacity to bring his art into contact with the higher life of his time; fermenting in its religion, its philosophy, its science, and its statesmanship (perhaps indeed their may not be any statesmanship going), he can at least bring it into contact with the obvious life and common passions of the streets.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays, volume 2

“Scientists need to be observed and criticized more than any other members of society. I say this not just because of the horrors that might emerge from their laboratories, but also because of the necessity for making them as morally and philosophically answerable as the rest of us.”
― Bryan Appleyard, Understanding the Present: An Alternative History of Science

“An adolescent act of defiance has now become a familiar form of virtue. 'Going with the flow' has become an imperative, a clear version of the good life. Chance is sentimentally evoked in popular fictions. We 'change' to move on from tragedy or difficulty, we 'change' to overcome trauma, we are frequently told to accept 'change' as some perennial fact of life, the contemplation of which brings wisdom.”
― Bryan Appleyard, Understanding the Present: An Alternative History of Science

“The whole point I am making is that a hard, irreducible sense of our own self-awareness has been progressively denied us by the inroads of science both as a form and as a creator of our society.”
― Bryan Appleyard, Understanding the Present: An Alternative History of Science

“And if I am further pressed to declare straightforwardly whether I mean to disparage these authorities [who criticize Ibsen], I reply, pointedly, that I do. I affirm that such criticisms are written by men who know as much of political life as I know of navigation.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic opinions and essays

“I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas into these articles. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous, subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blashphemous, and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and any one who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays, volume 2

“You cannot have qualifications without experience; and you cannot have experience without personal interest and bias. That may not be an ideal arrangement; but it is the way the world is built and we must make the best of it.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays, volume 1

“Ten times a day I am compelled to reflect on my past life ... and I can never justify to myself the spending of four years on dramatic criticism. I have sworn an oath to endure no more of it. Never again will I cross the threshold of a theatre. The subject is exhausted; and so am I.
I am off duty forever, and am going to sleep.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays, volume 2

“Usually I enjoy a first night as a surgeon enjoys an operation: this time I enjoyed it as a playgoer enjoys a pleasant performance.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays, volume 1

“The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart"

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite.”
― Jack Gilbert, Collected Poems

“I walk into Summerville and no matter what my mood is it instantly drops about thirty degrees.”
― Kim Addonizio, Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life

“On Monday last I sat without a murmur in a stuffy theatre on a summer afternoon from three to nearly half-past 6, spellbound by Ibsen; but the price I paid for it was to find myself stricken with mortal impatience and boredom the next time I attempted to sit out the pre-Ibsenite drama for five-minutes.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays, volume 2

“The truth is that writing is simply not reliable. You can't count on it to be there just because you've made time for it. In fact, making space might make it disappear.”
― Kim Addonizio, Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life

“Writing a novel is like having a baby. I know because I've had both, and the experiences were hellish. By comparison, the torture of the damned—plunged into excrement, boiled in blood, beheaded, set upon by harpies—are like love nips from your yippy little dog.”
― Kim Addonizio, Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life

“Loyalty in a critic is corruption.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays, volume 2

“I'd be very good at being rich, but no one has offered to test my talents in that department. ... New York was like a wealthy, handsome, intensely artistic, complex, slightly manic man who, for some inexplicable reason, was enthralled with me. Not that I ever met a man like that. Who needed men anyway? I'll take Manhattan.”
― Kim Addonizio, Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life

“Though now that I think about it, the workshop that day was probably focused on revision, as in Your First Draft Sucks and You Have a Thousand Do-Overs Before You Get It Right. Think of it this way: Build a city, then blow it up to save it. Invent a road to take you far out of town, then start over with one good brick.”
― Kim Addonizio, Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life

“If talking about the bureaucracy takes the place of talking about sports, getting involved with the bureaucracy takes the place of exercise. Every French man and woman is engaged in a constant entanglement with one ministry of another, and I have come to realize that these entanglements are what take the place of going to a gym where people actually work out. Three or four days a week you're given something to do that is time-consuming, takes you out of yourself, is mildly painful, forces you into close proximity with strangers, and ends, usually, with a surprising rush of exhilaration: 'Hey, I did it.' Every French ministry is, like a Nautilus machine, thoughtfully designed to provide maximum possible resistance to your efforts, only to give way just at the moment of total mental failure. Parisians emerge from the government buildings on the île de la Cité feeling just the way New Yorkers do after a good workout: aching and exhausted and on top of the world.”
― Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon

“One economic problem is especially acute here: Unemployment … Most of the other problems, the ones that create a sense of crisis, are anticipatory. They grow out of the fear that the right-wing government's tentative attempts at reform will eventually corral France into an 'Anglo-Saxon' economy, where an unleashed free market will make everybody do awful jobs for no money, forever.”
― Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon

“The trouble with mental catch is that the ball you throw changes in midair into another.”
― Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon

“Soccer writers seemed as starved for entertainment as art critics, anything vaguely enjoyable gets promoted to the level of genius.”
― Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon

“I understand why people play [soccer]. ... I even learned how to talk the game. It was the opposite of trash talking—tidy talking. I suppose you'd have to call it. If you did something good, it was brilliant; something less than brilliant was useless; if all of you were useless together, you were rubbish; and if a person did something brilliant that nonetheless became useless, everyone cried, 'Oh, unlucky!”
― Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon

“Accepting the eventual certainty of defeat in turn liberates you to take real joy in any small victory, that one good kick.”
― Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon