None of this is mine . . .

 
BRENT: The point is, you talk the talk, you do not walk the walk, vis a vis you have not yet passed your fork lift drivers test
 
In the desert, things are enormous and you can get on them


How we fall into grace. You can't work or earn your way into it. You just fall. It lies below, it lies beyond. It comes to you unbidden.


I personally think that literature is overpriced, and I won't buy it. All you get is a bunch of words


I will be out in a minute, I have to park the Buick first.


"Mr. Simpson, please do not offer my god a peanut!"


It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.


" Work is the curse of the drinking class."


Name of the deceased . . . something Polish


for those of you interested in madness, yours or mine, I can tell you a little bit about mine. I stayed at the poet's cottage at the University of Arizona, not because I am established but because nobody but a damn fool or a poor person ever visits or stays in Tucson in the summer months. it averaged around 106 degrees during my whole stay. nothing to do but drink beer.


Spider senses tingling . . .


The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind


Many moons ago this wasn't mine all mine


Makes you want to miss somebody that you don't even know


Indecision is the key to flexibility


There is absolutely no substitute for a genuine lack of preparation


I wished to be purely McGee . . . that big brown shambling boat-bum who walks beaches, slays small fierce fish, busts minor icons, argues, smiles, and disbelieves, that knuckly scar-issued reject from a structured society, who waits until the money gets low, and then goes out and takes it from the taker, keeps half and gives the rest back to the innocent. These matters can best be handled by the uninvolved.

 

If you are a toad in the Chihuahuan Desert, nature has designed a simple strategy for reproducing yourself. It rains. You sing. You copulate. Very quickly. Water, the desert's most limited and unpredictable element, cues amphibian lust, and when it does, the toads must emerge from their burrows and find the precise location of potential mates normally scattered across the land like long-lost golf-balls.

For this they need robust voices. Indeed, when you reduce these squat creatures to quintessential toadness, you find vocal cords and skin.

Ellen Meloy

 

"The person who believes she's found security will never reach paradise. What she mistakes for security is purgatory. You know what purgatory is, . . .  It's the waiting room, it's the lobby. Not only does she have the wrong libretto, she's stuck in the lobby where she can't see the show.

Passion isn't a path through the woods. Passion is the woods. It is the deepest, wildest part of the forest; the grove where the fairies still dance and obscene old vipers snood in the boughs. Everybody but the most dried up and dysfunctional is drawn to the grove and enchanted by its mysteries, but then they just can't wait to call in the chain saws and bulldozers and replace it with family-style restaurant or a new S and L.