The second principle of magic: things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed.
Remember that a noble logical diagram, once recorded, will never die; long after we are gone, it will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.
I am never free of the past. I have made it crystal clear that I believe the past is part of the present which becomes part of the future.
Day in, day out. That same old voodoo follows me about.
Interest works night and day in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man's substance with invisible teeth.
The great and good do no die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.
The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burrs.
But in the intellectual world, there is room for all opposing forces: even that which never appears victorious in the real world continues to be effective as a dynamic force (in the intellectual world) and precisely the unfulfilled ideals prove to be the most invincible.
It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past.
It's like miners' coal dust underneath your fingernails. Very difficult to scrub out. I'm a social democrat to my fingertips.
There's things that you don't want to do and they keep haunting you and following you. Bennett Miller directed this project [Capote], who is a friend of mine since I was 16, and Danny Futterman wrote it, and he's also been a friend of mine since I was 16.
Your past is not your past if it's still impacting your present.
The voice of flattery affects us after it has ceased, just as after a concert men find some agreeable air ringing in their ears to the exclusion of all serious business.
