Something traumatic happened to me when I was younger. I was with this old black woman, and she was very wise, very Alice Walker, The Color Purple...she looked at me and she says, "Baby...you know I used to be able to fly but I can't fly no more, baby. But baby, you...? You too fat to fly.

Sam Behrens - Javier Methol

The world is a very strange place, and there are times when the metaphorical or narrative description characteristic of culture and the material representation so integral to science appear to touch, when everything comes together—when life and art reflect each other equally.

The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.

Reasoning with a drunkard is like
Going under water with a torch to seek for a drowning man.

It is a remarkable fact in the history of geometry, that the Elements of Euclid, written two thousand years ago, are still regarded by many as the best introduction to the mathematical sciences.

Well, [Lorca had] a gift for gab. For example, he makes striking metaphors, but I think he makes striking metaphors for him, because I think that his world was mostly verbal. I think that he was fond of playing words against each other, the contrast of words, but I wonder if he knew what he was doing.

Before you say you can't do something, try it.

The work of destruction, speaking generally, goes on not in the light of day, but, metaphorically, in the dark hours of night.

I felt very sorry that I had not met this man.

What evil is there in seeing a man possess a woman? Why, the beasts would be more free than we! It seems to me that that which is given us by nature for our own preservation ought to be worn round the neck as a pendant and in the hat for a medal.

Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make.

The usual devastating put-downs imply that a person is basically bad, rather than that he is a person who sometimes does bad things. Obviously, there is a vast difference between a "bad" person and a person who does something bad.
Besides, failure is an event, it is not a person — yesterday ended last night.

The most of my sufferings and sorrows were occasioned by my own unwillingness to be nothing, which I am, and by struggling to be something.

There is something refreshingly ironic about people lying on the beach contracting skin cancer in an attempt to acquire a purely illusory appearance of good health, while germ-laden medical waste washes up on the sand all around them. (entitled Surf's Down Forever, p. 207)

My metaphors are dirty like herpes, but harder to catch, like an escape tunnel in prison I started from scratch.