2025.09.28
Philosophy is what you study when you desire to increase your ignorance.
Good times he thought of. Not good times gone, but good times as they happened, for the conjuring of past pleasures was the secret of long life. He heard his father's laugh, his mother's song; he tasted duck for the first time, and chopped liver lightly salted, and beer; he rolled in snow, he kissed a breast, he raced the dog to water, rode the horse, won from his sister at checkers, lost to his brother at chess; he talked on a telephone, listened to a radio, saw Toscanini, walked beside Casals--and held his breath as his grandchild said "I was wondering" from the delicatessen door.
"So I'm in the fields plowing and all of a sudden God came up to me and He said, 'Hello there, Joel Turk,' and I said, 'Hello there, God,' and He said, 'How are things?' and I said, 'You mean, *You* don't know?' and He said, 'Of course I know. I know everything. I was just making conversation, that's all. Let me tell you something, Joel Turk. This business of knowing everything, it doesn't leave much room for surprises. If I didn't make a little conversation every now and then, I think I'd go *meshugah*'."
Y'know, whoever told you you were funny did us all a vast disservice.
"Clichés," Blake said. "To hell with 'em."
The happiest day is that day in the past that you always run back to when the present proves unendurable. [...] You see--and here you must pay attention--we all get to pick our day. But we only get one pick. One time to choose. And the worst thing in the world, Jenny, the saddest thing is to choose the wrong day. You've got to pick a day that won't go bad on you; if you do, you'll have no place to run.
Located on the nineteenth and twentieth floors of a new glass-and-white-brick (what else?) building on Madison Avenue in the 40s, it was sterile enough to double as a hospital. The receptionist's desk was Danish modern, the lighting indirect, the rug one of those bloodless pale colors adored only by designers, the twin waiting sofas clean, new, armless, almost legless, practically backless, defiantly uncomfortable--hostile modern.
"She said that when her patients had confusions, what they were doing, most of the time, was ducking reality."
"I can't think of anything better to duck."
Every marriage needs an excuse in case things don't go well.
"All it takes is time."
"Thank God for that."
"We'll have to have patience."
"Do you know what love is? Love is supplying what's needed. Right now I've got all the patience in the world."
Repression is the better part of valor.