Friday, December 07, 2012

"Hardly had the Prime Minister entered the throne room, when there was a tremendous, shattering explosion. Prince Vakrivan, the Chief of Protocol who opened the parcel, was killed immediately. A hole was blown through the thick concrete floor, killing King Norodom Suramarit's personal valet, and wouding two more. A bomb of exceptional explosive force had been concealed in a small lacquer box, and set to go off when the wrappings were removed..." Norodom Sihanouk
"I remember asking Mal, our road manager, for what seemed like years and years, 'Have you got a pencil?' But of course everyone was so stoned they couldn't produce a pencil, let alone a combination of pencil and paper. I'd been going through this thing of levels, during the evening. And at each level I'd meet all these people again. 'Hahaha! It's you!' And then I'd metamorphose on to another level. Anyway, Mal gave me this little slip of paper in the morning, and written on it was, 'There are seven levels!' Actually it wasn't bad. Not bad for an amateur. And we pissed ourselves laughing. I mean, 'What the fuck's that? What the fuck are the seven levels?' But looking back, it's actually a pretty succinct comment; it ties in with a lot of major religions but I didn't know that then." Paul McCartney

Tuesday, December 04, 2012

"...So much concerning the several classes of idols and their equipage. All must be removed and put away with a fixed and solemn determination and the understanding thoroughly freed and cleansed. The entry into the Kingdom of man , founded on the sciences, is not very different from the entry into the Kingdom of Heaven, where into none may come except as a little child." --Francis Bacon, The Novum Organum, 1620
"If I live to be a thousand," says O'Toole, "I want nothing like Cambodia again. It was a bloody nightmare. I really hated it there. How much so you can judge by the fact that after six months in the Orient I hadn't picked up a single work there, whereas after nine months in the desert on Lawrence I was speaking Arabic pretty well."