Memorable Passages

[Boon Mee]

[BaitongBoy]

My Papa's Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

- Theodore Roethke

[BaitongBoy]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

[Chesty P.]

Good one. I am a big Dune fan.

[Norton]

Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

[Can123]

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[Can123]

[BaitongBoy]

Timothy Findley, The Wars

[BaitongBoy]

Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters

[Boon Mee]

[Chesty P.]

Bukowski was pretty smart for such a complete dirt-bag.

[Chesty P.]

I don't meet a lot of such people who are unusually intelligent. However, I knew the beat poet at one time and he was a complete mess. We all knew he was a genius, even though he was insane. He did not tell us he was famous, but someone eventually realized who he was and told us. He was the dishwasher at a friend's restaurant in the mid 70s.

[BaitongBoy]

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason

[BaitongBoy]

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life
don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can't beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.


- Charles Bukowski

[BaitongBoy]

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...

- Allen Ginsberg, Howl