'Who knocks?' 'I, who was beautiful, Beyond all dreams to restore,...

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Timidity is a fault for which it is dangerous to reprove persons whom we wish to correct of it.

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Its the sense of touch. Any real city, you walk, you're bumped, brush past people. In LA, no one touches you. We're always behind metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just to feel something.

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Children are guilty of unpardonable rudeness when they spit in the face of a companion; neither are they excusable who spit from windows or on walls or furniture.

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Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties, then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.

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The sure mark of one born with noble qualities is being born without envy.

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We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.

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Who said, 'All Time's delight Hath she for narrow bed; Life's troubled bubble broken'?— That's what I said.

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San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

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Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.

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It started when I left Vegas that first time, skipping the hotel bill, driving off in that red convertible all alone, drunk and crazy, back to L.A. That's exactly what I felt. Fear and loathing.

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Our actions are like the terminations of verses, which we rhyme as we please.

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The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.

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He kissed me. A kiss about apple pie a la mode with the vanilla creaminess melting in the pie heat. A kiss about chocolate, when you haven't eaten chocolate in a year. A kiss about palm trees speeding by, trailing pink clouds when you drive down the Strip sizzling with champagne. A kiss about spotlights fanning the sky and the swollen sea spilling like tears all over your legs.

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The accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.

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We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.

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A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.

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Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several--from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy.

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The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than actual brilliancy.

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Men are more satirical from vanity than from malice.

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Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.

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The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.

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A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.

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Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.

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Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.

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To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.

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We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.

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In LA the blood dries at night. The streets never cool down. The sound of helicopters fills the ears and sends knee jerk shots of panic, paranoia and animal savagery through the veins of the shuffled extras too numbed by glamour overload to notice that there's not a single intersection in the entire city where you can stand and not be an animal waiting to see your own intestines slide down your leg from a stray bullet. In this city they kill for the fuck of it, fuck for the hell of it and live for no reason. If I could have a nickel for every siren I've heard go screaming into the distance to some scene, I'd still be here, still be looking out the window of my room, still laughing at the fact that I can't get my window open very far because the security bars get in the way.

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The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.

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Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.

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