EVERY MAN HAS INSIDE HIMSELF A PARASITIC BEING WHO IS ACTING NOT AT ALL TO HIS ADVANTAGE. WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
DIAN FOSSEY–1932-1985—“Gorillas in the Mist” “Fossey’s War”
THE MORE YOU LEARN about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people.
GORILLAS are almost altruistic in nature. There’s very little if any ‘me-itis.’ When I get back to civilization I’m always appalled by ‘me, me, me.’
THE MAN who kills the animals today is the man who kills the people who get in his way tomorrow.
I FEEL MORE COMFORTABLE WITH GORILLAS THAN PEOPLE. I can anticipate what a gorilla’s going to do and they’re purely motivated.
I HAVE NO FRIENDS. The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people.
IT WAS THEIR INDIVIDUALITY COMBINED with the shyness of their behavior that remained the most captivating impression of this first encounter with the greatest of the great apes.
THE EXTRAORDINARY gentleness of the adult male with his young dispels all the King Kong mythology.
SUSAN SONTAG 1933-2004 “IN AMERICA” “REGARDING THE PAIN OF OTHERS”
FEW EVER SEE WHAT IS NOT ALREADY INSIDE THEIR HEADS.
TRY NOT TO LIVE IN A LINGUISTIC SLUM.
A GOOD LISTENER: a physical presence that is warm, alert, intelligent — more important than any words.
WE LIVE under the continual threat of two equally fearful but seemingly opposed destinies: unremitting banality & inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts which allows most people to cope with these twin specters.
ALL UNDERSTANDING begins with our not accepting the world as it appears.
TIME EXISTS in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once . . . and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.
THE FEAR of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes.
IT IS EASIER TO ENDURE than to change. But once one has changed what was endured is hard to recall.
READ A LOT. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening from a book. No book is worth reading that isn’t worth re-reading.
IN THE VALLEY OF SORROW SPREAD YOUR WINGS.
INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. Poignant longings for beauty, for an end to probing below the surface, for a redemption & celebration of the body of the world. Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph.
INTELLIGENCE IS REALLY A KIND OF TASTE: TASTE IN IDEAS.
THE ONLY INTERESTING ANSWERS ARE THOSE THAT DESTROY THE QUESTIONS.
WHEREVER PEOPLE FEEL SAFE — THEY WILL BE INDIFFERENT.
THE WHITE RACE is the cancer of human history; it is the white race & it alone — its ideologies & inventions — which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.