"Such lovely policemen God hath never wrought in America."
"...Christ was only on the cross for a weekend..."
"I was jealous of people with a God to hang onto, whereas I... soon all I'd have left would be 'eyes to cry with'."
"There's nothing enigmatic about it, unless you psychologize like a women's magazine, where everyone's reduced to some kind of consumer demographic: the eco-responsible urban professional, the brand-conscious bourgeoise, the LBGT-friendly club girl, the satanic geek, the techno-Buddhist. They invent a new one every week. I don't match up with some preconceived consumer profile, that's all."
" "Where are we going?" I asked
"I don't know," he said. "Just driving."
"But this road doesn't go anywhere," I told him.
"That doesn't matter."
"What does?" I asked, after a little while.
"Just that we're on it, dude," he said. "
"Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind."
"In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics'. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia."
"Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground."
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
"If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does."
""Americans like to read about things which they are afraid to do themselves.""
"William Blake put it well: "If a star should doubt, it would immediately go out." With the Crash, this happened in Hollywood. In spades.
The strain proved too much for many formed Greats. Rather than live among the rubble, these chose to Make an End. Some made dramatic tableaux of their suicides - gods self-slain on their own strange altars."
""Come to California for a glorious vacation. Advise anyone not to come seeking employment, lest he be disappointed; but for tourists the attractions are unlimited.""
"All through the twittish Twenties the tabs trotted out the oldie but goodie Hollywood Filth Parade, drooling oceans of ink over WILD PARTIES IN PICTURELAND, WEEKEND ORGIES OF THE STARS OF THE SILVER SHEET, SINGED STARLET WARNS OF WINDING CELLULOID ROAD TO RUIN, or MOVIELAND MASHERS SET THEIR SNARES. The sex-teased, sensation-thirsty, straphanger-shopgirl public lapped it up and dished out its pennies for more."
"Moreover, the Virgin Mary would have to forget her plans for divorce."
"The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals."