A Quote by John Keegan
It's commonly said that people who've been ill in childhood and who've had an upset education never really regret that they do. It means that you don't look at the world in the way that other people do, and if you were inclined to be a writer, that's a help.
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Hopefully people are upset for the reason I want them to be upset. Even when I was doing open mics, I've always had people upset. I've never been the consummate crowd-pleaser.
When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous.
Art and education may refine the taste, but they cannot purify the heart and regenerate the individual. His (Christ’s) words were simple yet profound. And they shook people, provoking either happy acceptance or violent refection. People were never the same after listening to him….The people who followed Him were unique in their generation. They turned the world upside down because their hearts had been turned right side up. The world has never been the same.
I never had a father, really. My great-grandmother raised me. But I was in this country where I got help from people that were not of my same color. So when I come out of the box, I don't come out of the box as racial. I look for good people, and people that will be like-minded and help me try to do good for other human beings.
When I talk about it, now people imagine I had an impoverished childhood, especially when I tell people we used to have to put coins in the side of the telly. But we were really happy. Mum never complained, there was always music playing in the house and we were always dancing around. It was a great childhood.
I learned a lot about my parents, who were both teachers. I had known that my parents were very strongly in favor of education. I had known that they had an impact on a lot of people, but people came out of the woodwork who have said, "You know, without your father, I would never have gone to college," very successful people. And so I learned how widespread their educational evangelism really was.
If you really want to drop the guilt you will have to drop your parental voices within, the priestly voices within. You will have to get rid of your parents and your conditioning. Life has been in such a trap up to now that even a small child starts feeling guilty. We have not yet been able to develop an education which can help people to grow without feeling guilty. And unless that education happens man will remain ill, ill at ease.
You have to get knocked down to realize how people really feel about you. I've realized that more than ever lately. The other day, I was on my way to the car. It was hailing, the streets were slippery and I was having a tough time of it. I came to a corner and started to slip. But before I could fall, four people jumped out of nowhere to help me. When I thanked them, they all said they knew about my illness and had been keeping an eye on me.
At every step of the way, when I had trouble, there were people that came in, in my life that helped me. It's important to go seek help when you need it, and to give help when other people need it. And that is really more important than coming in with a gigantic brain into the astronaut program.
Pure libertarianism believes that people will be generous and help each other. Well, they won't. I wish it were so, and I live that way. I help panhandlers, but other people are, 'Oh look at that - why doesn't he get a job?' While I believe in all that freedom, I also believe that no one should suffer needlessly.
I think probably the moments of failure have been when I didn't really understand that other people were around to actually help me. There were moments when I thought I had to solve everything on my own, and I didn't realize that I had resources.
Education is the key. With a really good education, you have a much broader view of the world. Well-educated people can seek help for themselves. They can help others.
We were never lovers, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world was the better for his being in it. These things alone do I now regret: things left unsaid. And he is gone, and I am old.
There is a lot of management going on with directing. Maybe that was the biggest surprise-just the amount of tending that I had to do. The different personalities . . . It's not my way, and it's never been my function before as a writer. I tend to be a moody and somewhat withdrawn person, and I felt very clearly that I had to throw that away because that wasn't allowed here - there were other people who were going to be filling that role. Sometimes it became exhausting, especially around the eleventh hour of the day.
I'm very conscious about the way I treat people because I was never really taught to treat people in a respectful or kind way. I never really saw that role model, so for me, that made me just want to be the opposite of what I had and treat people the opposite of the way I saw other people treat other people.
If we have learned anything in the past ten years, it is that these lovely things about America were never lovely. We have been expansionist and aggressive and mean to other people from the beginning. And we've been aggressive and mean to people in this country, and we've allocated the wealth of this country in a very unjust way. We've never had justice in our courts for the poor people, for black people, for radicals. Now how can we boast that America is a very special place? It's not that special. It really isn't.
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