Home > Work > Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?
1 " Your memory has always been given to opportunistic revision. "
― , Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?
2 " The men who are dropped in a jungle or a desert and expected video games and got mundanity and depravity and friends dying like animals. "
3 " –Don’t you think the vast majority of the chaos in the world is caused by a relatively small group of disappointed men?–––I don’t know. Could be.–The men who haven’t gotten the work they expected to get. The men who don’t get the promotion they expected. The men who are dropped in a jungle or a desert and expected video games and got mundanity and depravity and friends dying like animals. These men can’t be left to mix with the rest of society. Something bad always happens. "
4 " If you don’t have something grand for men like us to be part of, we will take apart all the little things. Neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Building by building. Family by family. "
5 " Who says we don’t want to be inspired? We fucking want to be inspired! What the fuck is wrong with us wanting to be inspired? Everyone acts like it’s some crazy idea, some outrageous ungrantable request. Don’t we deserve grand human projects that give us meaning? "
6 " You don’t know what it’s like to be a man over thirty who’s never had anything happen to him. You spend so many years trying to stay safe, stay alive, to avoid some unknown horror. Then you realize the horror is existence itself. The nothing-happening. "
7 " You and I read the same books and hear the same sermons and we come away with different messages. That has to be evidence of some serious problem, right? "
8 " You see pictures of Buddha and he’s sitting, reclining, at peace. The Hindus have their twelve-armed elephant god, who also seems so content but not powerless. But leave it to Christians to have a dead and bloody man nailed to a cross. "
9 " The death of a young person for no reason is an apocalypse. "
10 " And the only thing worse than the silencing of a martyr, a real martyr – someone with dangerous ideas – is silencing someone who has nothing at all to say. "
11 " The money that could have saved the Shuttle, and the money we send to random countries, that we use to remake unchangeable countries ten thousand miles away. "
12 " Young men, come and blow things up. "
13 " Young men need to be kept away from guns, bombs, women, cars, hard alcohol and heavy machinery. "
14 " Every fucking suburb has a SWAT team. "
15 " Existing, period – that is what drives men to irrational acts. "
16 " It's not human. It's not primal. So we don't understand it. It's a more recent mutation. The things we all have, love and hate and passion, and the need to eat and yell and screw, these are things every human has. But there's this new mutation, this ability to stand between a human being and some small measure of justice and blame it on some regulation. To say that the form was filled out incorrectly. "
17 " I don't think I've ever gotten any significant thing I wanted. You have no idea how weird it is to envision things and have them come to nothing. No vision has ever come true, no promise has ever been kept. But then there was you, and you were the promise that would obliterate all the disappointments of the past. Everything about you insisted on it. Your color, your hair, the way light projects from every part of you. You were the sun that would burn away all the putrid broken promises of the world. "
18 " —When I see these massacres at malls or offices, I think, There by the Lake of God go I. —Grace of God. —What’s that? —It’s “There but for the grace of God.” —No. It’s “there by the Lake of God.” —It’s “grace of God.” —It can’t be. —Son. It is. —I’ve always had this picture in my mind of the Lake of God. And you walk by it. —There’s no Lake of God. —It was like this huge underground lake, and it was dark and cool and peaceful and you could go there and float there and be forgiven. — "
19 " No vision has ever come true, no promise has ever been kept. But then there was you, and you were the promise that would obliterate all of the disappointments of the past. Everything about you insisted on it. Your color, your hair, the way light projects from every part of you. You were the sun that would burn away sponge putrid broken promises of the world. "
20 " The sun was still low, and everything was golden, and I thought I was seeing my destiny. "
