Cynical Is The Name We Give Those

Philosophy Is An Odd Thing... There Is No Particular Socratic Or Dimechian Or Kantian Way To Live Your Life. They Don't Offer Ethical Codes And Standards By Which To Live Your Life.

I Suppose The Thing I Most Would Have Liked To Have Known Or Been Reassured About Is That In The World, What Counts More Than Talent, What Counts More Than Energy Or Concentration Or Commitment, Or Anything Else - Is Kindness. And The More In The World That You Encounter Kindness And Cheerfulness - Which Is Its Kind Of Amiable Uncle Or Aunt - The Better The World Always Is. And All The Big Words: Virtue, Justice, Truth - Are Dwarfed By The Greatness Of Kindness.

Choking With Dry Tears And Raging, Raging, Raging At The Absolute Indifference Of Nature And The World To The Death Of Love, The Death Of Hope And The Death Of Beauty, I Remember Sitting On The End Of My Bed, Collecting These Pills And Capsules Together And Wondering Why, Why When I Felt I Had So Much To Offer, So Much Love, Such Outpourings Of Love And Energy To Spend On The World, I Was Incapable Of Being Offered Love, Giving It Or Summoning The Energy With Which I Knew I Could Transform Myself And Everything Around Me.

Great Writers, I Discovered, Were Not To Be Bowed Down Before And Worshipped, But Embraced And Befriended. Their Names Resounded Through History Not Because They Had Massive Brows And Thought Deep Incomprehensible Thoughts, But Because They Opened Windows In The Mind, They Put Their Arms Round You And Showed You Things You Always Knew But Never Dared To Believe. Even If Their Names Were Terrifyingly Foreign And Intellectual Sounding, Dostoevsky, Baudelaire Or Cavafy, They Turned Out To Be Charming And Wonderful And Quite Unalarming After All.

I Said It Before And I’ll Say It Again: Books Are Dead, Plays Are Dead, Poems Are Dead: There’s Only Movies. Music Is Still Okay, Because Music Is Sound Track. Ten, Fifteen Years Ago, Every Arts Student Wanted To Be A Novelist Or A Playwright. I’d Be Amazed If You Could Find A Single One Now With Such A Dead-end Ambition. They All Want To Make Movies. Not Write Movies. You Don’t Write Movies. You Make Movies.