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[My muse] feels nostalgic for Japan, and, perhaps strangely, for the pioneer days of America.
Quentin S. Crisp -
Nonetheless, I'm not sure this entirely accounts for my Buddhist voice, which tells me forever to give up writing, to give up on relationships, simply to give up. Whatever it is, it doesn't seem to me to be the voice of innocence.
Quentin S. Crisp
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I think [imagination] very austere element of Buddhism is also linked with a strong antinatalist strain in the philosophy. The Buddha was enlightened when he destroyed the house of body and soul into which he would otherwise have been forever reborn. This is clearly antinatalism.
Quentin S. Crisp -
I'm more a dog person than a cat person.
Quentin S. Crisp -
I never went to church as a child. I did not .
Quentin S. Crisp -
On the other hand, the seventies were drab. That is, I am utterly fascinated by the fifties and sixties.
Quentin S. Crisp -
You focus on the here and now in order to escape existence forever and vanish into Nirvana. There is another religious impulse that is the opposite of this. It uses a world elsewhere in order to affirm life and give a reason to "go forth and multiply".
Quentin S. Crisp -
I do not think that my spiritual apprehensions are as dogmatically cultural as those of many people who have been brought up strictly in a particular tradition.
Quentin S. Crisp
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Non-pantheist models for god seem almost completely untenable to me, though not without interest.
Quentin S. Crisp -
I really think [William] Burroughs was onto something here, when he said, "Dreams are a biologic necessity and your lifeline into space."
Quentin S. Crisp -
I feel that Nagai Kafu was a writer who cold stitch together apparently meaningless moments like these into a lyrical whole, and has enhanced my ability to do the same with my own life.
Quentin S. Crisp -
Some people have described Daoism as pantheist, and although there's something in me that resists this designation, I can see that Daoism is consistent with pantheism. If there is any way in which pantheism makes sense and is not redundant, then it is the way (or 'the Way') presented in Daoism.
Quentin S. Crisp -
The urban, on the other hand, is often seen as more real and mundane, even though it is obviously far more recent in terms of planetary development. I think this might be because nature corresponds to the unconscious and the artificial world of the city and human culture to the conscious mind.
Quentin S. Crisp -
I like the concept of an anti-muse, though I'm not quite sure what that is. If there is such a thing in my life, I suppose it is just this weariness, this sense that it is more fulfilling not to exist, to efface all traces, than to limit oneself to the determined expression of manifestation.
Quentin S. Crisp
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Zen is influenced by Daoism, which is not so much a nature-religion in the animistic sense as a nature-philosophy in a cosmic sense.
Quentin S. Crisp -
I mean, in 1979 I was seven. I do remember punk, though, as a playground phenomenon, and remember that it was exciting to us. It really was, to a five- or six-year-old, quite a thrilling enticement to revolt. The anarchy sign scratched in desk tops, and so on.
Quentin S. Crisp -
I suppose I could say that to be interested in innocence already suggests a remove from innocence, perhaps a longing for something that is lost.
Quentin S. Crisp -
I'm constantly struggling with the futility and even sinfulness, from an antinatalist point of view, of creativity. And that struggle itself seems part of the creativity, though I sometimes suspect that it's nothing but a burden and an obstacle.
Quentin S. Crisp -
I don't know if Britain ever really achieved that much glamour. We had post-war austerity rather than post-war prosperity, and our cultural products of the time include some pretty dour kitchen-sink dramas of the A Kind of Loving variety. (This kind of film seems disillusioned with the sixties before they've even really begun.)
Quentin S. Crisp -
I would say that, apart from being a writer, I have also always been very conscious of the idea of a 'world elsewhere'.
Quentin S. Crisp
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Some Buddhists, however, never seem to get past the void, and I suppose I view this as a kind of Buddhist 'Old Testament' that I don't especially like.
Quentin S. Crisp -
There's a strong aspect of Buddhism which is geared towards ending all fertility.
Quentin S. Crisp -
It would be hard to say that exactly, but antinatalism is a reality in my life, not just an interesting idea. I can feel it in the chilled and weary marrow of my bones.
Quentin S. Crisp -
The research reading I did for Fascination and Liberation included some Jung, and I noticed that he had a similar impression of Buddhism to myself, that, if it weren't for certain qualifying clauses, the philosophy would be downright suicidal.
Quentin S. Crisp