A Quote by Simon Raven

And so, at the age of thirty, I had successively disgraced myself with three fine institutions, each of which had made me free of its full and rich resources, had trained me with skill and patience, and had shown me nothing but forbearance and charity when I failed in trust.
A girl had bidden me eat and drink and sleep, and had shown me friendship and had laughed at me and had called me a silly little boy. And this wonderful friend had talked to me of the saints and shown me that even when I had outdone myself in absurdity I was not alone.
I'd had a racist experience as a child at age 10, where people had thrown rocks at me and bottles. I didn't understand. And all it was, was because of the color of my skin, nothing I had done, nothing I had said.
It was not the thought that I was so unloved that froze me. I had taught myself to do without love. It was not the thought that God was cruel that froze me. I had taught myself never to expect anything from Him. What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction. What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity. Now even that had flickered out.
The immaterial blue colour shown at Iris Clert's in April had in short made me inhuman, had excluded me from the world of tangible reality; I was an extreme element of society who lived in space and who had no means of coming back to earth. Jean Tinguely saw me in space and signaled to me in speed to show me the last machine to take to return to the ephemerality of material life.
She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, an awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant contradictory place, and it had me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions.
I felt I had nothing more to say. Everything would have had to be a replay of the previous two or three albums, and that decided me to stop. What bothered me most was not playing guitar at all anymore. I felt I had no more contact with the instrument. It was just a piece of wood to me. I even thought music had definitely left me. After fourteen albums, there may be an overload phase, a sort of lassitude.
It had been only through books-at best, no more than vicarious cultural transfusions-that I had managaed to keep myself alive in a negatively vital way. Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.
In fact, I lost my dad at a young age and had to put myself through school. I didn't have a lot of the advantages Donald Trump had but I had the most important ones you can get, which are loving parents who cared about me and helped me develop a sense of self. But it certainly wasn't Donald Trump's doing.
After I had been working as a cap maker for three years it began to dawn on me that we girls needed an organization. The men had organized already, and had gained some advantages, but the bosses had lost nothing, as they took it out on us.
Yet, I wondered why Marshall did not at least attempt a kiss. In many ways, his treatment of me reminded me of the way I had behaved toward the doll that Mamma Mae had given me as a child. I favored it so that I had refused myself of the joy of playing with it, daring to love it only with my eyes. But in doing so, I had denied myself its very purpose.
I was born 20 years after my eldest sister. I was the pampered child. That kind of love gives you an almost unbreakable backbone. My mother had three kids before me. She let me be completely free. I just never had anything to beat myself up over.
When I read that the British army had landed thirty-two thousand troops - and I had realized, not very long before, that Philadelphia only had thirty thousand people in it - it practically lifted me out of my chair.
My mother had faith in me, had more faith in me than I had in myself, and knowing that she did made me try to find faith. She believed in trying things.
My mom and I, we have trust within each other because at one time in our lives, we were kind of all that we had, you know? My mom had me, and I had her.
If I wanted to be free, truly free, I had to choose. There were many points on the compass rose; I had to locate the few that were meant for me. Not any destination picked at random; I had to head for those that summoned me with a passion, for they were the ones that gave meaning to my life. I had to ignore the warnings of those who would tell me why I couldn't do what I wanted to do.
From the age of three to 15, I wanted to be a ballerina and trained really, really hard. Then I had that classic movie story moment, where I had an injury and had to give up my dream.
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