“Time brought along its secretary, memory, and space brought its brat, loneliness.”

“Information about time cannot be imparted in a straightforward way. Like furniture, it has to be tipped and tilted to get it through the door. If the past is a solid oak buffet whose legs must be unscrewed and whose drawers must be removed before, in an altered state, it can be upended into the entryway of our minds, then the future is a king-size waterbed that hardly stands a chance, especially if it needs to be brought up in an elevator.Those billions who persist in perceiving time as the pursuit of the future are continually buying waterbeds that will never make it beyond the front porch or the lobby. And if man's mission is to reside in the fullness of the present, then he's got no space for the waterbed, anyhow, not even if he could lower it through a skylight.”

“Perhaps sound carries farther across time than across space.”

“If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time. Lacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot firmly planted in its history, and in the end, conforms, like an artist, not to the world but to its own inner being--ever mindful of its personal style.”

“To the extent that this world surrenders its richness and diversity, it surrenders its poetry; to the extent that it relinquishes its capacity to surprise, it relinquishes its music; to the extent that it loses its ability to tolerate ridiculous and even dangerous exceptions, it loses its grace.”

“Time passed. Art came off the walls and became rituals. Ritual became religion. Religion spawned science. Science led to big business. And big business, if it continues on its present, mindless trajectory, could land those lucky enough to survive its ultimate legacy back into caves again.”

“Don't let yourself be victimized by the age you live in. It's not thetimes that will bring us down, any more than it's society. When youput the blame on society, then you end up turning to society for thesolution. Just like those poor neurotics at the Care Fest. There's atendency today to absolve individuals of moral responsiblity and treatthem as victims of social circumstance. You buy that, you pay withyour soul. It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limitgays, it's not whites who limit black. what limits people is lack ofcharacter. What limites people is that they don't have the fuckingnerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.Yuck....It's a wonderful time to be alive. As long as one has enoughdynamite. --pg. 116-117”