
for better or for worse.
Nobel lecture (2001)
Source: I Am America
for better or for worse.
Nobel lecture (2001)
Source: Going Bovine (2009), p. 389
Context: Marisol does a silly dance with Balder and the screw, one in each hand, so that nobody gets the idea that she takes tins — or anything else, for that matter — seriously. And just like that, something in the cosmos shifts. A butterfly flaps its wings in South America. Snow falls in Chicago. You give an idiot a stupid magic screw and it turns out to be a necessary part after all.
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
“What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings.”
An assessment of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ch. 17
A Moveable Feast (1964)
Context: His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.
“Trying to make a living from poetry is like putting chains on butterfly wings.”
Paris Review interview (1996)