When I bore people at a party, they think it is their fault.

I have enough money to last me the rest of my life unless I buy something.

Confidence is contagious; so is the lack of it.

Now it is not good for the white man's health To hustle the Aryan brown For while the white man riles The Aryan smiles As he weareth the white man down And at the end of the Fight Lies a tombstone white With the name of the late deceased And the epitaph drear: A Fool lies here Who tried to hustle the East.

There are two kinds of tired. There's good tired, and there's bad tired. At the end of each day it doesn't matter whether you have won or lost what kind of tired you are. You might have won, but if you fought other people's battles you'll be bad tired, and when you hit the hay you'll toss and turn and won't settle easy. But if you fought your own battles, chased your own dreams, and lived your own life then you don't even have to tell yourself. You'll be good tired. You'll sleep the sleep of the just and you can say, take me away.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL IDEA The most beautiful idea on the face of the earth is the idea the child has that his father knows everything. Jack Kerouac, The Town and the City Memories beat inside a hollow chest As I awaken to a sledgehammer of sorrow I hear you say: The best of thoughts are tears When words will soothe tomorrow I feel the circle close As your lifewill's slowly broken You're gone And now it's me who knows The truth of what you've spoken Father, further will I try to band That ring each has of winning But sometimes An end must be at hand To realise a beginning. To my Dad. With love. November 1994

IN THIS SAD OLD LONESOME NIGHT In this sad old lonesome night While in vain I search inside And try to find with all my might That little part of me that�s died I can only see your face And your disappointed eyes And the pain that takes its place In this cold bed of my lies I long to push my life�s clock back To times we had before Before I wandered off the track And discovered less instead of more And yet the only thing I find In the darkness of my soul Is the love I left behind And a heart no longer whole And the emptiness I feel I know is just the cost Of ignoring what is real And what can easily be lost If you can find it to forgive And repair your battered heart We can once more try to live And go forward from this start Though it�s a long long way to fall When the chasm lies within Though each step back�s hard and small When you�re ready, I�ll begin February 1995

FAREWELL THEN MY SON Do not call me, father Do not seek me Do not call me Do not wish me bad We are on a route uncharted Fire and blood erase our tracks On we fly on wings of thunder Nevermore to sheath our swords All of us in battle fallen Not to be brought back by words Will there be a rendez-vous? I know not I only know we still must fight We are sandy grains in infinity Never to meet, nevermore see light. Farewell then, my son Farewell then my conscience My youth and my solace My one and my only And let this farewell be the end of a story Of solitude vast than which none is more lonely In which you remain barred forever and ever From light and from air with your death pangs untold Untold and unsoothed not to be resurrected Forever and ever An eighteen year old. No trains ever come from those regions unscheduled or scheduled No aeroplanes fly there. Farewell then my son For no miracles happen In the world dreams do not come true Farewell I will dream of you still as a baby Treading the earth with little strong toes The earth where already so many are buried This song to my son then is come to a close. Read by Laurence Olivier on The World at War

THE CORRIDORS OF YOUR LIFE Down the corridor of your mind are many doors Who knows what lies behind them? Life makes you choose. In youth, hungry to win, afraid to lose Not wanting to disappoint, and eager to please You open them with ease. Some bring you failure, or its twin, success Some seem a certainty, others a guess You find many unimportant Or only means to ends Behind some lie enemies, A precious few hide friends. The trip down this corridor is a test To prove to yourself you have what it takes Focusing on your goal, ignoring the rest Savouring your victories, exposing mistakes You press on to be best. At some point down this corridor, far from the start When you least expect A new door opens to a journey apart You meet someone and suddenly connect And are led down the corridor of the heart. This new corridor is different though, Its journey lifelong Behind each door lessons are learned New emotions you couldn�t know Right and wrong the hard way earned Daily paid as feelings grow. These emotions conflict as inside you change You feel joy and doubt, Contentment and pain, The bitterness of loss and the sweetness of gain As solutions somehow work themselves out In this corridor decisions count Both when taken and later As consequences mount There are no victories, no defeats No false starts, no repeats Only the experience of life made greater. In this corridor you go forward and remember back Old scars heal When new feelings take their place Showing little behind a public face While inside you alone can know That like your inner thoughts, each scar is real. The corridor of the heart leads to love But there is a price to be paid For its end is the sum of all decisions made Of the anger you have felt Or the hurt you�ve been dealt Of all words good and bad you�ve said. But whatever the price this corridor exacts Through what is in your grasp Or beyond your control Without the sum of all its acts Your human life would not be whole For the corridor of the heart leads to your soul. Kew, England March 1998

YOU PIERCE MY HEART You came into my life Unannounced A warm shadow from a setting sun Late on a winter's afternoon Without knowing you sent a sliver of heat to pierce a heart long ago taken At dusk you parted Leaving behind The mystery of a smile A memory A sweet wound A question mark for the long night ahead�. ?

Never trust a man whose head wobbles when he walks.

If I speak in the tongues of men and angels , but I have not love, I am as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but I have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perserveres. Love never fails... When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became I man, I put away childish things. Now we see but a poor reflection as a mirror, then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Our relation to paradox is a barometer of our enlightenment.

Golf is simultaneously a doorway and a prison, the very mirror of life in that regard. It provides us a jail to be broken out of, but a jail we can clearly see rather than the often invisible one that holds us in our daily life.

You can't make old friends.

When a man lies he murders some part of the world These are the pale deaths which men miscall their lives All this I cannot bear to witness any longer Cannot the Kingdom of Salvation take me home

Success is like pregnancy. Everybody congratulates you but nobody knows how many times you got screwed to achieve it.

Everybody laughs in the same language.

I am a nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore I am perfect.

Use the talents you possess For the woods would be a silent place If no birds sang Except the best.

WHY ENGLISH IS A DIFFICULT LANGUAGE Beware of heard, a dreadful word That looks like beard, but sounds like bird. And dead; it's said like bed, but looks like bead, For goodness sake don't call it deed. Watch out for meat, and great, and threat, They rhyme with suite, and straight, and debt. A moth is not a moth, as in mother Or both as in bother, or broth as in brother. And here is not a match for there, Nor dear and fear, for bear and pear.

But enough about me, said the egomaniac to himself.

We stop ourselves from the unknown, when maybe the unknown is the best thing that can ever happen to us.

In boca al lupo. Crepi il lupo. Said to wish someone good luck. In the mouth of the wolf. Death to the wolf.

Honesty has her dwelling in a high place, above rocks difficult to climb.

The time to worry is before you place your bet, not after the wheel has started spinning.

What might have been is a land no wise soul should step into.

I seem to have been only like a boy playing on a seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble, or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

The desire to perform is not an indicator of talent.

There are three kinds of people: Those who can count and those who can't.

To die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture.

To sell something you have to somebody who wants it; this is not business, To sell something you don't have to somebody who doesn't want it; this is business.

I cook for fun; for food we go to the restaurant.

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; For want of a shoe, the horse was lost; For want of a horse, the rider was lost; For want of a rider, the battle was lost; For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost.

We are all alone, but at the same time we are not. We seek peace and quiet, but find that when we have too much of it silence becomes a deafening roar. We are taught to be self sufficient but find eventually we return to our early days, having our bottoms wiped and being sung to by a surrogate mother. Our working life meanders along the continuum of fear, complacency, and greed, and where we stand along that line is mostly a matter of chance. We look to our neighbour, shrug our shoulders, and mutter: Yo soy mi y mis circumstancias. We want to reach out to others, but have lost the art of listening, and so hurtle along by ourselves, no closer to the guy sitting next to us on the Number 4 train than Pluto from the sun. Letter to Gary Witt, 27-november-99

The Five Virtues of the Superior Man: simplicity, harmony, wisdom, contentment, a life beyond ambition.

It is easier to beg forgiveness than to get permission.

Maybe my cat's name Is Schroedinger. Or is it? We will never know.

The highest form of efficiency is the spontaneous cooperation of a free people.

No lie can live forever.

Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it...

When sorrows come, they come not in single spies, but in battalions.

When a woman goes to bed she should take modesty off with her skirt and put it on again with her petticoat.

There are a thousand ways to wealth, but only one way to heaven.

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Be still, and know that I am God.

The world we live in is the words we choose.

Only all of us know the truth.

If you find yourself in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out�.. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying: "damn, that was fun�."

F Free up your mind. O Organise your thoughts C Concentrate on the moment. U Understand where you are and where you are going. S Search for the SIMPLE SOLUTION.