Quotes about skull
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“A dark-skinned human with four arms walks toward me across the floor of the club, clad only in a belt strung with human skulls.”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 1, “Duel” (p. 1; opening line)

“"Th' immortal mind of mortal man!" we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry;
Whose mind but means his sum of thought, an essence of atomic "I." Thought is the work of brain and nerve, in small-skulled idiot poor and mean;
In sickness sick, in sleep asleep, and dead when Death lets drop the scene.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

Death, Sleep, Cry, Dead

“Black are the horses.
The horseshoes are black.
On the dark capes glisten
stains of ink and wax.
Their skulls are leaden,
which is why they do not weep.
With their patent leather souls
they come down the street.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

Los caballos negros son. Las herraduras son negras. Sobre las capas relucen manchas de tinta y de cera. Tienen, por eso no lloran, de plomo las calaveras. Con el alma de charol vienen por la carretera. " Romance de la Guardia Civil Española http://www.poesia-inter.net/index214.htm" from Primer Romancero Gitano (1928)

Soul, Horse

“The imagination of teenagers is often -- I'm tempted to say always -- the only sure capital they possess apart from the love of their parents, which is a force far beyond their capacity to comprehend or control.During my own adolescence, my imagination, the kingdom inside my own skull, was my sole source of refuge, my fortress of solitude, at times my prison. Like all teenagers, I provisioned my garrison with art: books, movies, music, comic books, television, role-playing games. Given their nature as human creations, as artifacts and devices of human nature, some of the provisions I consumed were bound to be of a dark, violent, even bloody and horrifying nature; otherwise I would not have cared for them.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Nanny Nation http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/04/15/EDG8D64JFR1.DTL, San Francisco Chronicle (April 15, 2004)

Love, Books, Art, Music

“I remember that they had this wonderful effect for my demise [on 2020: Texas Gladiators], with my skull being cracked open by an axe. They had photos of this stunning effect made, but then decided to change it because they thought it was just too much.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Photo, Change

“Your skull in gold will be more valuable than others, being solid all through.”

Tim Powers book Declare

Source: Declare (2001), Chapter 12 (p. 345)

“[Velociraptors] are among my very favourite dinosaurs. Their long upcurved skulls, slender yet compact proportions, and great sickle claws make these elegant, attractive, yet demonic animals. There is nothing else like them. Pound for pound, these are among the most powerful of known predators; certainly no other theropod had such a combination of foot, hand, and head weaponry… Among theropods only Tyrannosaurus, with its extreme skull strength, equalled Velociraptor in total power relative to weight.”

Gregory Scott Paul (1954) U.S. researcher, author, paleontologist, and illustrator

Gregory S. Paul (1988) Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Simon and Schuster, p. 362-363
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World

Animals

“That diamond encrusted goat's skull is the height of good taste!”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Radio 2 Show (2007–2008)

“Here I must inject a personal note—I never shed blood upon the field of Sidwell Friends, nor did I fight the battles of Yale Law. I am a miner's son, and my father was a self-made man who unmade himself during my youth. Education was not a family legacy, and my kin belonged to the United Mine Workers of America, not to Skull and Bones. My forebears fought this country's wars from the bottom ranks, and I began my own military career as a private. I have felt the full arrogance of those to whom much was given, and personally, wish that I might come to bury the elite, not to praise them. Yet, those who would rise need examples to emulate. It grates on me to write it, but our military needs a return of the nation's elite to the officer corps, to the extent that a traditional elite, with its spotty but essential ideals of service, still exists.”

Ralph Peters (1952) American military officer, writer, pundit

autobiographical aside from Beyond Terror, p. 319. Originally part of an essay entitled "Hucksters in Uniform" which appeared in the May 1999 edition of The Washington Monthly.
1990s, Hucksters in Uniform (1999)

War, Youth, Education, Family

“You look like any other brainless jackanapes,” he mused, “but apparently there’s some gray matter left in your artfully coiffed skull after all.”

Algis Budrys (1931–2008) American writer

The End of Summer, p. 22
The Unexpected Dimension (1960)

“Why is the human skull as dense as it is? Nowadays we can send a message around the world in one-seventh of a second, but it takes years to drive an idea through a quarter-inch of human skull.”

Charles Kettering (1876–1958) American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 140 patents

As quoted in Boss Ket (1961) by Rosamond McPherson Young p. 194

World, Idea

“It lay heavily in her hands, the crystal face gleaming, the golden body exquisitely machined. It was very like a clock, or a compass, for there were hands pointing to places around the dial, but instead of the hours or the points of the compass there were several little pictures, each of them painted with extraordinary precision, as if on ivory with the finest and slenderest sable brush. She turned the dial around to look at them all. There was an anchor; an hourglass surmounted by a skull; a chameleon, a bull, a beehive… Thirty-six altogether, and she couldn't even guess what they meant.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Lyra, investigating the alethiometer, in Ch. 4 : The Alethiometer
His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995)

Painting

“In Wing Chun if you throw two fast punches to someone's head they'll be knocked out. The first punch causes the brain to go to one side of the skull. If a quick second hit comes, the person is knocked out. If you withdraw the hand to give the second punch, then the brain can recover (will have more time to recover), but if you don't give this time then a knockout results.”

Wong Shun Leung (1935–1997) martial artist

Wong Shun Leung Comments on the Chain Punches in Wing Chun Punching Source: Comments From Wong Shun Leung and Tsui Shan Ting, by Ray Van Raamsdonk http://www.springtimesong.com/wcqanda.htm

Time, Personality

“The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility, and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1972) The Humble Programmer http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html (EWD340). 1970s

“When I arrived at the place of the execution, the gunmen fired into a pit the size of several rooms. They fired from small submachine guns. As I arrived, I saw a Jewish woman and a small child in her arms in the pit. I wanted to pull out the child, but then a bullet smashed the skull of the child. My driver wiped brain particles from my leather coat.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

CBC report (2000)

“[E]ven if you do know about art, you can’t talk about it socially… Damien Hirst’s shark was a common talking point for a time, and so will the diamond skull be: for a little more time, perhaps, but not forever. The Botticelli paintings are forever because they aren’t talking points.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Reflections on a Diamond Skull', on corporate art
Television and radio, Radio 4: A Point of View

Art, Time, Painting

“Roger: But really, a punk rock kid is the same all over the world, it’s the same dress code, everyone’s wearing chucks, it’s the same skull tattoo, it’s the same look, and everyone’s happy to be there. Our fans are the same everywhere.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

World, Tattoo, Happiness

“To see your own visage up there, it's terrifying. I have to see a film twice, the first time just to get over the shock: the fact that my face seems to be dripping off my skull into my chest.”

William H. Macy (1950) American actor, screenwriter, teacher and director in theater, film and television

Interview in The Guardian (2011)

Time

“Where do you think I was today? I stood straight in front of him (Himmler) for a whole hour and talked, and he… he played with a puzzle the whole time – you know, this glass cube with three balls on the inside… When I finished, he took off his pince-nez, wiped it with a handkerchief – he has a skull even on his handkerchief – and said, "Listen, Ernst! Have you by any chance, ever had a dream, where you're riding in the back of a ragged truck to who knows where, and some monsters are sitting around you?" I didn’t say anything. Then he smiled and said, "Ernst, you know, I know as well as you that no astral exists. But what do you think, if you, and even Canaris, have your own people in 'Annenerbe', shouldn’t I have my own people there as well?" I did not understand what he meant. "Think Ernst, think!" he said. I kept silent. Then he smiled and asked, "Whose man do you think is Kröger?" …Yes, Emma… It seems I'm too simple for all these intrigues… But I know that while the Führer needs me, my heart will keep beating… You know, Emma… Sometimes it seems to me, that it's not me who is alive, but it's the Führer who is living inside me…”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

To Emma, recorded by secret spy listening device WS-M/13 located in Kaltenbrunner's bedroom, 1/14/1935. Quoted in "Kröger's Revelation" - by Viktor Pelevin - 1991 - Page 277

People, Smile, Dreams, Understanding

“Adams, Chris (2002). Turquoise Days: The Weird World of Echo & the Bunnymen. Soft Skull Press: New York..”

Ian McCulloch (1959) singer, musician

References

World

“'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,
"Who fell in the great victory.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

St. 3. The Battle of Blenheim http://www.poetry-archive.com/s/the_battle_of_blenheim.html (1798)

Victory

“Strike the enemy’s settlements, turn them into dust, pave the Arab roads with the skulls of Jews.”

Hafez al-Assad (1930–2000) former president of Syria

Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War [Oxford University Press, 2002], p293

“And weave fine cobwebs, fit for skull
That's empty when the moon is full;
Such as take lodgings in a head
That's to be let unfurnished.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto I, line 159
Source: Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)

“Cartridge firearms are compact vehicles for change that have shaped modern history. The righteousness of their use is entirely up to their users, since like any other tool they can be used both for good or for ill. A firearm is just a tool with no volition. A rifle is no different than a claw hammer. To wit: A hammer can be used to build a house, or it can be used to bash in someone’s skull—the choice of uses is entirely up to the owner. A bulldozer can be used to build roads, or to destroy houses. A rifle can be used to drill holes in paper targets, or to dispatch a marauding bear, or to murder your fellow man. Again, the choice of uses is entirely up to the user.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Source: Tools For Survival (2009), P.149

History, Change, Housing

“To a fair extent the Tyrannosaurus species are the tyrannosaur's of tyrannosaurs; they have taken to an extreme the development of skull size, strength, and power. This and the larger, more forward-pointing mid-upper jaw teeth suggest a more potent wounding ability than the albertosaur's. The stoutness of Tyrannosaurus relative to albertosaurs is readily apparent in the skeletal restorations. They are not as graceful, but they have a well-proportioned, majestic attractiveness of their own.”

Gregory Scott Paul (1954) U.S. researcher, author, paleontologist, and illustrator

Gregory S. Paul (1988) Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Simon and Schuster, p. 338
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World

“The Rally Man's patter ran on through the dawn
Until we said so long to his skull
Shrill yell.”

Lou Reed (1942–2013) American musician

Black Angel's Death Song
Lyrics

“Standing at the mirror, I tilted my hat over one eye and examined myself. The image in the glass seemed only vaguely familiar. I didn't like my new tie, so I took off my coat and tried another. I didn't like the change either. All at once everything began to irritate me. The stiff collar was strangling me. The shoes pinched my feet. The pants smelled like a clothing store basement and were too tight in the crotch. Sweat broke out at my temples where the hat band squeezed my skull. Suddenly I began to itch, and when I moved everything crackled like a paper sack. My nostrils picked up the powerful stench of lotions, and I grimaced. Mother in Heaven, what had happened to the old Bandini, author of The Little Dog Laughed? Could this hog-tied, strangling buffoon be the creator of The Long Lost Hills?”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

I pulled everything off, washed the smells out of my hair, and climbed into my old clothes.
Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Eight

Dogs, Shoe, Change, Clothes

“They were gunning the motorcycles. There were these little backfires. There was one noise like that. I thought it was a backfire. Then next I saw Connally grabbing his arms and saying "no, no, no, no, no," with his fist beating. Then Jack turned and I turned. All I remember was a blue-gray building up ahead. Then Jack turned back so neatly, his last expression was so neat… you know that wonderful expression he had when they'd ask him a question about one of the ten million pieces they have in a rocket, just before he'd answer. He looked puzzled, then he slumped forward. He was holding out his hand … I could see a piece of his skull coming off. It was flesh-colored, not white — he was holding out his hand … I can see this perfectly clean piece detaching itself from his head. Then he slumped in my lap, his blood and his brains were in my lap … Then Clint Hill [the Secret Service man], he loved us, he made my life so easy, he was the first man in the car … We all lay down in the car … And I kept saying, Jack, Jack, Jack, and someone was yelling "he's dead, he's dead."”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

All the ride to the hospital I kept bending over him, saying "Jack, Jack, can you hear me, I love you, Jack."
The "Camelot" interview (29 November 1963)

Love, Life, Secret, Cars

“Erudition, n. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Books

“All you do is head straight for the grave, a face just covers a skull awhile. Stretch that skull-cover and smile.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Visions Of Cody (1973)

Smile

“Some… resistance also came from the belief that preserved historical writings could provide all anyone needed to know about the habits of past civilizations. …According to the archeologists, this site was supposed to have had an uninterrupted sequence of Israelite occupation… These archeologists "knew" that there had been a continual occupation of people practicing full-blown Jewish orthodoxy based on their interpretation of the preserved written records. …But, to the extreme surprise of the dig's staff… one-third of the bones from the floor of the synagogue were pig. Anathema! …directly beneath the floor of this synagogue… the first piece of bone I picked up was from the skull of a young human. Again, anathema! How could orthodox Jews build anything, much less a synagogue, over a human burial area? …no reports on the site including my analyses have ever seen the light of day.”

Jeffrey H. Schwartz (1948) American anthropologist

What the Bones Tell Us (1997)

People, Light, Past

“That's a 7.76mm round, you idiots, if you fire it into the air it comes to earth you know not where, like on some little kid's soft-skulled head, and that's the end of the kid. They're too stupid to even figure that much out.”

John Dolan (1955) American journalist

Gary Brecher at exile.ru/authors, 2002

Stupidity

“Seventh and Ninth generation Old Hemlocks, I see in them all of those ancestors, not just the bloodline and shape of the skull, but the character, the way they feel. […] They are all in my heart, not gone to some vague afterland to enjoy a happier life, for they were happiest with me. If I could have l kept one of them with me for all Time, it would have meant missing all the others.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

Grouse Along the Tramroad (1986)

Life, Way, Feeling, Time

“Douglas-Home: Can you not make me look better than I do on television? I look rather scraggy, like a ghost.
Make-up girl: No.
Douglas-Home: Why not?
Make-up girl: Because you have a head like a skull.
Douglas-Home: Doesn't everyone have a head like a skull?
Make-up girl: No.”

Alec Douglas-Home (1903–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Michael Cockerell, "Live from Number 10", p. 105.
A story told by Douglas-Home about going on television in the 1964 election.
Attributed

Home, Girl

“Melancholy sees the worst of things,—things as they may be, and not as they are. It looks upon a beautiful face, and sees but a grinning skull.”

Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American writer

Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume II, p. 52.

Beauty

“Sultan Firoz Tughlaq writes in his Fatuhat that he appeased by means of gifts the heirs of those who had been deprived of a limb, nose, eye, hand or foot in the time of his late lord and patron Sultan Muhammad Shah. Firoz Tughlaq is known for his kind-heartedness but, according to Shams Siraj Afif, he killed one lakh 80 thousand Bengalis in war. Towers of skulls of the killed were erected. The chronicler adds, "Firoz Shah was near the mound of skulls with all magnificence; and glory and was inspecting the counting of the heads."”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Shams Siraj Afif, quoted in Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

War, Time

“He is Karna, whom the world has abandoned. Karna Alone. Condemned goods. A prince raised in poverty. Born to die unfairly, unarmed and alone at the hands of his brother. Majestic in his complete despair. Praying on the banks of the Ganga. Stoned out of his skull.
Then Kunti appeared. She too was a man, but a man grown soft and womanly, a man with breasts, from doing female parts for years. Her movements were fluid. Full of women. Kunti, too, was stoned. High on the same shared joints. She had come to tell Karna a story.
Karna inclined his beautiful head and listened.
Red-eyed, Kunti danced for him. She told him of a young woman who had been granted a boon. A secret mantra that she could use to choose a lover from among the gods. Of how, with the imprudence of youth, the woman decided to test it to see if it really worked. How she stood alone in an empty field, turned her face to the heavens and recited the mantra. The words had scarcely left her foolish lips, Kunti said, when Surya, the God of Day, appeared before her. The young woman, bewitched by the beauty of the shimmering young god, gave herself to him. Nine months later she bore him a son. The baby was born sheathed in light, with gold earrings in his ears and a gold breastplate on his chest, engraved with the emblem of the sun.
The young mother loved her first-born son deeply, Kunti said, but she was unmarried and couldn't keep him. She put him in a reed basket and cast him away in a river. The child was found downriver by Adhirata, a charioteer. And named Karna.
Karna looked up to Kunti. Who was she? Who was my mother? Tell me where she is. Take me to her.
Kunti bowed her head. She's here, she said. Standing before you.
Karna's elation and anger at the revelation. His dance of confusion and despair. Where were you, he asked her, when I needed you the most? Did you ever hold me in your arms? Did you feed me? Did you ever look for me? Did you wonder where I might be?
In reply Kunti took the regal face in her hands, green the face, red the eyes, and kissed him on his brow. Karna shuddered in delight. A warrior reduced to infancy. The ecstasy of that kiss. He dispatched it to the ends of his body. To his toes. His fingertips. His lovely mother's kiss. Did you know how much I missed you? Rahel could see it coursing through his veins, as clearly as an egg travelling down an ostrich's neck.
A travelling kiss whose journey was cut short by dismay when Karna realised that his mother had revealed herself to him only to secure the safety of her five other, more beloved sons - the Pandavas - poised on the brink of their epic battle with their one hundred cousins. It is them that Kunti sought to protect by announcing to Karna that she was his mother. She had a promise to extract.
She invoked the Love Laws.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

pages 232-233.
The God of Small Things (1997)

Love, Women, God, Secret

“My own preliminary diagnosis is that I am out of my skull and getting farther from its vicinity every day.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

"Diary of a Mad Deity" p. 191 (originally published in Synergy: New Science Fiction, Number 2, edited by George Zebrowski)
Short fiction, Bible Stories for Adults (1996)

“The insomniac brain comes in various flavours; different personality types you're forced to share your skull with for several hours. It's like being trapped in a lift with someone who won't shut up. Sometimes your companion is a peppy irritant who passes the time by humming half- remembered TV theme tunes until 7am. Other times it's a morose critic who has recently compiled a 1,500-page report on your innumerable failings and wants to run over it with you a few times before going to print. Worst of all is the hyper-aware sportscaster who offers an uninterrupted commentary describing which bits of your body are currently the least comfortable. No matter where you put that leg, he won't be satisfied. And he's convinced you've got one arm too many.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian 26 October 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/26/charlie-brooker-sleeping-lessons Guardian columns

Time, Personality

“Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"Whispers of Immortality"
Poems (1920)

Death

“You say paranoia, I say surveillance state. Worried about being tracked by hidden cameras stealthy air-borne remotely piloted vehicles, and chips implanted in your skull? You’re merely a realist.”

Charles Stross book Rule 34

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 12, “Toymaker: Reality Excursion” (p. 143)

“Sky’s so big and dazzling and buzzing and crackling and moaning with all that black silence, I feel like my skull is open to space, all that way-beyond soaking directly into my brain. Stars and stars and stars…some of em planets, some of em satellites. All of em out there, alone, untouchable.”

Malcolm Azania book The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

Source: The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004), Chapter 39 “Telescope to Avalon” (p. 226)

Way, Feeling, Star, Silence

“I'd love to see the whole of your sex swimming in a sea of blood. The way I feel I could drink out of your skull. I could eat your heart roasted whole! You think I'm weak! My father will come home - find his money stolen! He'll send for the sheriff - and I'll tell him everything. Then there'll be peace and quiet … forever.”

August Strindberg (1849–1912) Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter

Julie in Miss Julie (1888)

Love, Money, Peace, Sex

“In a little while all resistance was gone, and I knocked on Hellfrick's door. His room was madness, pulp western magazines over the floor, a bed with sheets blackened, clothes strewn everywhere, and clothes-hooks on the wall conspicuously naked, like broken teeth in a skull. There were dishes on the chairs, cigaret butts pressed out on the window sills…He was always drinking, day and night, but he never got drunk.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Drink, Madness, Clothes, Night

“I have declared again and again that if I say Aryans, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language… in that sense, and in that sense only, do I say that even the blackest Hindus represent an earlier stage of Aryan speech and thought than the fairest Scandinavians… To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar.”

Max Müller (1823–1900) German-born philologist and orientalist

Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas (1888)

Sense

“And the good news is that you've got a brain. You do! Honest! I saw it with my own eyes, thus disproving the navy's stubborn contention that soldiers have nothing whatsoever inside their skulls. I shall write a paper for the Review.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

I'll be famous! Brain discovered in a soldier.
Doctor Jethro McCann, to Captain Richard Sharpe, after sewing up a severe head wound, p. 78
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Fury (2006)

“I could issue manifestos summoning seraphim to revolt against the Haavenly State we're in, or trumpets to summon American mankind to rebellion against the Authority which has frozen all skulls in the cold war, That is, I could, make sense, invoke politics and try organize a union of opinion about what to do to Cuba, China, Russia, Bolivia, New Jersey, etc. However since in America the folks are convinced their heaven is all right, those manifestos make no dent except in giving authority & courage to the small band of hipsters who are disaffected like gentle socialists. Meanwhile the masses the proletariat the people are smug and the source of the great Wrong. So the means then is to communicate to the grand majority- and say I or anybody did write a balanced documented account not only of the lives of America but the basic theoretical split from the human body as Reich has done- But the people are so entrenched in their present livelihood that all the facts in the world-such as that China will be 1/4 of world pop makes no impression at all as a national political fact that intelligent people can take counsel on and deal with humorously & with magnificence. So that my task as a politician is to dynamite the emotional rockbed of inertia and spiritual deadness that hangs over the cities and makes everybody unconsciously afraid of the cops- To enter the Soul on a personal level and shake the emotion with the Image of some giant reality-of any kind however irrelevant to transient political issue- to touch & wake the soul again- That soul which is asleep or hidden in armor or unable to manifest itself as free life of God on earth- To remind by chord of deep groan of the Unknown to most Soul- then further politics will take place when people seize power over their universe and end the long dependence on an external authority or rhetorical set sociable emotions-so fixed they don't admit basic personal life changes-like not being afraid of jails and penury, while wandering thru gardens in high civilization.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Gordon Ball (1977), Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties, Grove Press NY
Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties

Life, God, War, People

“The Scorpio period of the year (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) is the time when the life force withdraws from all outer forms in nature and is concentrated in the seed. It is striking that the cultural symbol for this time of the year in the United States is the Halloween pumpkin with its insides removed, leaving only an empty shell with a blankly staring face. In fact, the jack-o-lantern is a symbol of death, a symbolic skull with the glimmering remains of the departed life force represented by the candle within it. Traditionally, the Halloween feast (the Eve of All Saints Day) was a time when the dead came back to life and when human beings in the physical body could most immediately contact departed spirits of all kinds, as well as their own patron saints. It is significant that children are allowed at this time to wander out at night, past their usual bed time, and that they are not supposed to go from house to house begging for food until the Sun (the symbol of physical life) has completely set!”

Stephen Arroyo (1946) American astrologer, astrological writer

Astrology Karma & Transformation: The Inner Dimensions of the Birth Chart (1992, ISBN: 0-916360-54-7)

Life, Death, Children, Food

“But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn’t give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab’s eyes on the end of a stalk.”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Ordinary Men and Women
Naked Lunch (1959)
Context: Benway: Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard. This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell. This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called “The Better ‘Ole” that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, “Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?” “Nah I had to go relieve myself.” After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time. Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: “It’s you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we don't need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and shit.” After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole’s tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D. T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous — (did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates spontaneously?) — except for the eyes you dig. That's one thing the asshole couldn’t do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn’t give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab’s eyes on the end of a stalk.

Feeling, Suffering

“Marilyn Quayle was there, too, looking – it was indeed a strange week in Washington – great. She had her hair done up in something my wife said was a chignon, and whatever it was, it made Marilyn look considerably less like a Cape buffalo than usual. Though actually I admired the Cape buffalo look. I have an idea that – like a Cape buffalo – if Marilyn Quayle gets furious and charges, you've got only one shot at the skull. You wouldn't want to just wound her.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Parliament of Whores

Parliament of Whores (1991)

Idea

“Consciousness is solitary. Each person lives in that bubble universe that rests under the skull, alone.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream

Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 13, p. 280
Context: We all have seven secret lives. The life of excretion; the world of inappropriate sexual fantasies; our real hopes; our terror of death; our experience of shame; the world of pain; and our dreams. No one ever knows these lives. Consciousness is solitary. Each person lives in that bubble universe that rests under the skull, alone.

Universe, Personality

“Men have been killing each other for centuries without need to blame skulls or relics.”

David Gemmell book Stormrider

Rigante series, Stormrider
Context: We don’t have time for theological debates, or philosophical discussion on the nature of evil,’ he said. ‘Men have been killing each other for centuries without need to blame skulls or relics.

Men

“Wars always were contests of similar competing powers, and the deepest structure of society remained the same, whether one won or the other. Contests of classes are fights for new principles, and the victory of the rising class transfers the society to a higher stage of development. Hence, compared with real war, the moral forces are of a superior kind: voluntary devoted collaboration instead of blind obedience, faith to ideals instead of fidelity to commanders, love for the class companions, for humanity, instead of patriotism. Their essential practice is not armed violence, not killing, but standing steadfast, enduring, persevering, persuading, organizing; their aim is not to smash the skulls but to open the brains. Sure, armed action will also play a role in the fight of the classes; the armed violence of the masters cannot be overcome in Tolstoian fashion like by patient suffering. It must be beaten down by force; but, by force animated by deep moral conviction.”

Antonie Pannekoek (1873–1960) Dutch astronomer and Marxist theorist

Section 2.6
Workers Councils (1947)

Faith, Making love, War, Victory

“Do you know what goes on at Skull & Bones? I have a family audience, so I can’t say it. They have sexual rituals– some of the most ancient Egyptian rituals– where they believe they are possessed by entities. Basically, space aliens.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

"John Kerry had sex in coffins hundreds of times in Satanic ritual" https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=135&v=5aeLkXDvO-g, September 2013 2013

Family

“Weep for me, my eyes! Spill your tears
And mourn for me the vanished kings
Hujr ibn 'Amru's princely sons
Led away to slaughter at eventide;
If only they had died in combat
Not in the lands of Banu Marina!
No water was there to wash their fallen heads,
And their skulls lie spattered with blood
Pecked over by birds
Who tear out first the eyebrows, then the eyes.”

Imru' al-Qais (501–544) Arabic Poet

Diwan of Imru' al-Qays, Poem 2, quoted in Dictionary of Literary Biography, p. 213
The Poem of Imru' al-Qais

Water, Bird, Lie, Tear

“There had been a human soul in that skull only a few hours earlier, and now no authority in the universe could bring her back. We were like monkeys sitting around a fire that had just extinguished, wondering why the warmth and light had gone away.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 19 (pp. 307-308)

Light, Soul, Universe

“I very much lament for what has happened to the groves in Madhura. The coconut trees have all been cut and in their place are to be seen rows of iron spikes with human skulls dangling at the points.”

Gangadevi Indian princess and Sanskrit poetess

Source: Gangadevi. On the condition of Madurai under the Muslim rule. Chattopadhyaya, Brajadulal (2006), Studying Early India: Archaeology, Texts and Historical Issues, Anthem Press, ISBN 978-1-84331-132-4

Tree

“Here’s some miscellaneous information. First, wear what you like. Personally I dislike uniforms. I never have worn a uniform. Secondly, if you have a religion, keep it to yourself. I dislike religions. I have always disliked religions. In response to the thought passing through each of your skulls, I do not think of myself as God. But you may do so, if you choose.”

Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer

Sail 25 (p. 75)
Short fiction, Future Tense (1964)

God, Personality, Religion, Thinking

“The royal children have skulls of granite, it’s true, but they come by that honestly.”

Jim C. Hines (1974) American writer

Source: The Goblin Quest Series, Goblin War (2008), Chapter 2 (p. 51)

Children

Quotes about skull page 2

Quotes about skull
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