I'm Bright, But There Are

Cliché Activates The Comfortable Mental Laziness, We Sort Of Revert To The Domain Of The Already-familiar, What We Have Already Imagined So That It Doesn't Seem That Bad.

The People Who Listened To Rock 'n' Roll, I Thought, Were Bound Together Against The People Who Didn't Listen To Rock 'n' Roll. That, Of Course, Didn't Work At All. Your Taste In Rock 'n' Roll Does Not Say Anything About You, Morally Or Otherwise.

I've Never Had A Stupid Student In My Life. I Never Look Down On My Students. I Never Thought, "look At These People." I Might Argue With Them And I Think That Some Of Them Might Have Misconceptions - That They Might Be Infected By The Intellectual Laziness That Is The Foundation Of American Popular Culture, And Of Capitalism, If You Wish. But Part Of My Job As A Teacher Is To Work With That - Against That.

For People Who Are Displaced, You Can Reconstruct The Story Of Your Life From The Objects You Have Access To, But If You Don't Have The Objects Then There Are Holes In Your Life. This Is Why People In Bosnia - If Anyone Was Running Back Into A Burning House It Was To Salvage Photos.

It Is So Much Easier To Deal With The Dead Than With The Living. The Dead Are Out Of The Way, Merely Characters From Stories About The Past, Never Again Unreadable, No Misunderstandings Possible, The Pain Coming From Them Stable And Manageable. Nor Do You Have To Explain Yourself To Them, To Justify The Fact Of Your Life.