"Thinking the Unthinkable About John Lennon" (1980-12-11), p. 299
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)
“The work of John Lennon was marked by its exquisite beauty and by its brutal honesty.”
Prelude to his performance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBEx2xHLDjE of "Mind Games" in Come Together: A Night for John Lennon's Words and Music (2001)
Context: John Lennon was many things to many people. A poet, a rocker, a leader, a troublemaker, a father, a husband — a man. Growing up, to me, he was a hero. The work of John Lennon was marked by its exquisite beauty and by its brutal honesty. So in that vein, let me say, that while I'm both deeply honored to be here — I'm also incredibly pissed-off. I'm outraged because this passionate prophet of peace, and so many others, are not with us here — because we live in an all-too-violent world. And so in the spirit of this occasion it is up to all of us, to do what we can, not only to keep John's songs alive, but help rebuild New York — and that includes your host...
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Kevin Spacey 8
American actor, director and producer 1959Related quotes
quote, early 1950's
Source: 1950s, from 'Abstract Expressionism' (1990), p. 40

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)
Context: Certain individual words do possess more pitch, more radiance, more shazam! than others, but it's the way words are juxtaposed with other words in a phrase or sentence that can create magic. Perhaps literally. The word "grammar," like its sister word "glamour," is actually derived from an old Scottish word that meant "sorcery." When we were made to diagram sentences in high school, we were unwittingly being instructed in syntax sorcery, in wizardry. We were all enrolled at Hogwarts. Who knew?
When a culture is being dumbed down as effectively as ours is, its narrative arts (literature, film, theatre) seem to vacillate between the brutal and the bland, sometimes in the same work. The pervasive brutality in current fiction – the death, disease, dysfunction, depression, dismemberment, drug addiction, dementia, and dreary little dramas of domestic discord – is an obvious example of how language in exploitative, cynical or simply neurotic hands can add to the weariness, the darkness in the world. Less apparent is that bland writing — timid, antiseptic, vanilla writing – is nearly as unhealthy as the brutal and dark. Instead of sipping, say, elixir, nectar, tequila, or champagne, the reader is invited to slurp lumpy milk or choke on the author's dust bunnies.

“When things are exquisitely beautiful and rare, they shouldn't be privately owned.”
Quoted in Sarah Stuteville, " You might be a socialist if… An interview with Kshama Sawant http://www.seattleglobalist.com/2012/10/30/you-might-be-a-socialist-if-an-interview-with-kshama-sawant", The Seattle Globalist (October 30, 2012).

"Memoirs of Robert E. Lee" by A. L. Long (1886)
1870s