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"You can say the Jesus Prayer from now till doomsday, but if you don't realize that the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment, I don't see how you'll ever even move an inch. Detachment, buddy, and only detachment. Desirelessness. 'Cessation from all hankerings.' It's this business of desiring, if you want to know the goddam truth, that makes an actor in the first place. Why're you making me tell you things you already know? Somewhere along the line — in one damn incarnation or another, if you like — you not only had a hankering to be an actor or an actress but to be a good one. You're stuck with it now. You can't just walk out on the results of your own hankerings. Cause and effect, buddy, cause and effect. The only thing you can do now, the only religious thing you can do, is act. Act for God, if you want to — be God's actress, if you want to. What could be prettier? You can at least try to, if you want to — there's nothing wrong in trying." There was a slight pause. "You'd better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I'm talking about. You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world."

 

J. D. Salinger

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I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret — Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

 

J. D. Salinger

 

There's a detachment that you need as a writer. And as a young man, I probably had more detachment than I have today. So that part of me was just looking at the battlefield, and it was certainly full of horrors. There was a lieutenant with us and a driver and another enlisted man like myself. And I think they were shocked profoundly.'
I just thought — this is a cold and cruel thing to say, but it's the way a writer is — I thought, "Oh, this is good." Not that it was good that all these people are dead. But "Oh, it's so good for writing." There was a sense of, "This can be used."

 

Norman Mailer

 

A boy named Buddy came up beside me in the schoolyard. I don't remember what passed as prologue, but I do not forget what Buddy divulged to me: If you're white, you're all right; If you're brown, stick around; If you're black, stand back.
It was as though Buddy had taken me to a mountaintop and shown me the way things lay in the city below.

 

Richard Rodriguez

 

You know what was really humiliating? I got a DWI in a Chevette. It's not like if I hit anyone it would make a difference. Be fair. 'Son you're drunk no doubt about it, but you're in a Chevette buddy, hell go get 'em.' It's like a Big Wheel hittin' your shit. They got mosquitoes bigger than these f**kin' cars. Piece of shit car. Turn the air conditioner on in a Chevette while you're driving it's like hitting the car in the balls. It goes down to 5 all of a sudden. I feel like the Flintstones in that thing. You push the lighter in the battery light comes on. No wonder I'm f**kin' drunk. I hit a moth one time it did $400 damage to this piece of shit. The moth was all right he rolled with it. He took off I'm waitin' for a tow truck. 'What happened to your car buddy?' Shit I hit a bug. 'You're lucky to be alive. A man in Tennessee hit a ladybug in one of them things sheered his head clean off...and his thumbs.'

 

Bill Hicks

 

I told him, "We're all gay, buddy. It's just to what extent are you gay." He says, "That's bullshit, man, I ain't gay at all!" I said, "Yes, you are and I'll prove it." He says, "Fine, prove it." I said to him, "All right- do you like porn?" He says, "Yeah, I love porn, you know that." I said, "Do you only watch two women together?" He said, "Naw, I watch a man and a woman make love." I said, "OK, do you want the guy to have a tiny, half-flaccid penis?" He said, "Naw, man, I like big, hard, throbbing co- (stunned pause) ...I did not know that about myself."

 

Ron White