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♋ ♦ We have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere. –His Dark Materials fan website ♦ [Priests] lay claim to heaven after they are dead, and yet they require their heaven in this world too, and grumble mightily against the people that will not give them a large temporal maintenance. And yet they tell the poor people that they must be content with their poverty, and they shall have their heaven hereafter. But why may we not have our heaven here (that is, a comfortable livelihood in the earth) and heaven hereafter too, as well as you? ... While men are gazing up to heaven, imagining after happiness or fearing a hell after they are dead, their eyes are put out, that they not see what their birthrights are, and what is to be done by them here on earth while they are living. ----------Winstanley quoted in Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down ♦ The best laid schemes o’ mice and men, leave us nought but grief and pain. –the poem To a Mouse by Scottish poet Robert Burns ♦ How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign’d... -in the poem Eloisa To Abelard by Alexander Pope ♦ "The Nature, which delights in periodic repetition in the heavens, is the same nature which rules the affairs here on Earth. Let us not forget that lesson." - Mark Twain ♦ “An accident has taken place at the Chernobyl power station, and one of the reactors was damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Those affected by the accident are being given assistance. A government commission is being set up”. -(TIME,Winter,1996) Soviet Union, (5/12/1986) At 9 p.m. Monday, a newscaster on Moscow television read a four-sentence statement from the Council of Ministers. The terse, almost grudging announcement. ♦ No more painters, no more writers, no more musicians, no more sculptors, no more religions, no more royalists, no more republicans, no more imperialists, no more anarchists, no more socialists, no more Bolsheviks, no more politicians, no more proletarians, no more democrats, no more armies, no more police, no more nations, no more of these idiocies, no more, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING. -Aragon, in thirteenth issue of Littérature ♦ Surrealism, n., Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner – the actual functioning of thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concerns. - Breton identified automatism as the principal Surrealist artistic practice, the primary route into the marvellous (in La Révolution surréaliste) ♦ In my mouth, mine of words and kisses, thought and desires become confused, reduced to the unique expression of the utterance. - Leiris in Le Point cardinal (Cardinal Point) ♦ It is the marvellous faculty of attaining two widely separate realities without departing from the realm of our experience; of bringing them together and drawing a spark from their contact. - Breton, in the preface for Max Ernst’s 1921 Paris exhibition ♦ Quotes by Salvador Dali: • Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad. • You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life. • When I paint, the sea roars. The others splash about in the bath. • One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams. • The desire to survive and the fear of death are artistic sentiments. • At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since. • Have no fear of perfection, you'll never reach it. • You know the worst thing is freedom. Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity. • Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing. ♦ “In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred" - August Rodin ♦ "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, & the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." -Karl Marx ♦ "Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned." -unknown ♦ ‘instantaneous and hand done colour photography of the super-fine, extravagant, extra-plastic, extra-pictorial, unexplored, super-pictorial, super-plastic, deceptive, hyper normal and sickly images of concrete irrationality’ - Salvador Dali commenting on his art work ♦ People sometimes pay with their lives for saying aloud what they think - Anna Politkovskaya (Russian journalist) ♦ Beware of artists – they mix with all classes of society and are therefore most dangerous - Queen Victoria ♦ Art is what you can get away with - Marshall McLuhan ♦ There is nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight. - Lon Chaney, Sir ♦ ‘How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves’, exclaimed Soshi. ‘You are not a fish’, commented his friend, ‘how do you know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?’ ‘You are not myself’, answered Soshi; ‘how do you know, that I do not know, that the fishes are enjoying themselves?’ - Taoist dialogue ♦ Strap a piece of toast – buttered side up – to the back of a cat. Throw the cat out of the window. Will the cat land on its feet or will Murphy’s Law apply? - The Art of Looking Sideways ♦ …the implacable hostility of the universe - The Art of Looking Sideways (on the Murphy’s Law) ♦ Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault in reality - The Art of Looking Sideways ♦ The white triangle is a phantom only existing in our minds - The Art of Looking Sideways (commenting on the Kanizsa Triangle) ♦ The statement below is true. The statement above is false. - The Art of Looking Sideways ♦ Moorfields Eye Hospital The line of women in dressing gowns and black glasses hiding bandaged eyes sit in their armchairs staring at the colour television. On screen two American cops in black glasses stare back at them. - Ian Breakwell’s diary ♦ Due to the inability of humans to think of inconspicuous subjects and imaginative scenarios, purple cows walk all over the place without ever being seen by anyone. - My own statement, inspired by Alan Fletcher’s book The Art of Looking Sideways ♦ A lady visited Matisse in his studio. Inspecting one of his latest works she unwisely said: ‘But, surely the arm of this woman is much too long.’ ‘Madame,’ the artist politely replied, ‘you are mistaken. This is not a woman; this is a picture [of a woman].’ - The Art of Looking Sideways ♦ The I-don’t-care scale: 2 jots = 1 tittle 3 tittles = 1 continental 2 continentals = 1 tinker’s dam 4 tinker’s dams = 1 damn - Measure for Measure, Joe Ecclesine ♦ Political opponent’s measure: 2 nincompoops = 1 fathead 2 fatheads = 1 incompetent 3 incompetents = 1 opportunist 2 opportunists = 1 machiavelli - Measure for Measure, Joe Ecclesine ♦ Alcohol beverage measure: 2 fingers = 1 tot 2 tots = 1 shot 2 shots = 1 slug 4 slugs = 1 snootful 2 snootfuls = 1 night in jail - Measure for Measure, Joe Ecclesine ♦ Historical invective scale: 2 scamps = 1 rascal 3 rascals = 1 knave 2 knaves = 1 varlet 4 varlets = 1 scoundrel 2 scoundrels = 1 charlatan -Measure for Measure, Joe Ecclesine ♦ When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there, for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then… - Blaise Pascal ♦ I don’t paint with my hands, but my tail. - Auguste Renoir ♦ To imagine is like flying a kite. The mind, loosely tethered, is free to be blown about. Usually the direction it takes just happens but sometimes by tweaking the string it can arrive at an unlikely destination. Take Einstein who, struck with the thought of riding on a shaft of light in outer space while looking at himself in the mirror, interpreted the imagery to come up with the principles of his Theory of Relativity. … Although fantasy and make-believe flourish in childhood they rapidly atrophy as one is moulded to fit the adult’s grey consensus of reality. A child, out on a walk with its mother, suddenly points and cries out, ‘Look, a purple cow.’ The mother, perhaps rather tired and domestically harassed, snaps, ‘Don’t be silly.’ And then delivers the crunch line: ‘There’s no such thing as purple cows.’ So the child, a vagabond in the backwoods of rationality, is brought up to see the world in the prosaic terms of grown-ups and eventually forgets it ever saw a purple cow. Now purple cows walk around unseen by anyone. - Alan Fletcher, The Art of Looking Sideways ♦ Ah, yes! I wrote the Purple Cow I’m sorry, now, I wrote it! But I can tell you anyhow, I’ll kill you if you quote it! - Frank Gelett Burgess, The Burgess Nonsense Book ♦ I never saw a purple cow, I never hope to see one; But I can tell you, anyhow, I’d rather see than be one! - Frank Gelett Burgess, The Burgess Nonsense Book ♦ A friend of mine was reading the draft copy of this book. ‘Can people really see purple cows?’ she mischievously asked me.

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