Terence McKenna (Terence Kemp McKenna) Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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It is easy to remove the mind from harping on the lost illusion of immortality. The disciplined intellect fears nothing and craves no sugar-plum at the day's end, but is content to accept life and serve society as best it may.
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There's nothing unnatural in creation.
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Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.
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Living in New York, for me at least, just keeps it very real and keeps my feet firmly planted on the ground.
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Time is the ultimate long tail. Even with a big wad of money up front, if something sells forever, the back end is what ultimately counts.
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I never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a book illustrator. I used to hurry home from school and draw.
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The most romantic thing someone did was surprise me at the airport, after being away for 3 months in Los Angeles. You always see people with signs, and you're like, 'Isn't that lovely?' and then you see your own name on one - that isn't a taxi driver's! I was very impressed.
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Moderate people are able to be moderate and have free speech only because there are some people on the fringe.
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Any athlete has massive reserves in their body and their emotional landscape.
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In fiction, a reaction shot is a brief portrayal of how your character reacts to something that someone else has done. In contrast to more direct character building, your guy doesn't initiate the sequence; he completes it. Exactly how he completes it can tell readers a lot about him.
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The Queen's wedding dress in 1947, there was some embroidery on the train which was definitely there to illustrate new dawn/post-war optimism, that sort of thing.
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I'm a lot more interested in people than I used to be. I used to be most interested in abstract ideas, and people were an afterthought, but that's changed a bit.
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If you have drive and energy, everything is possible.
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I base jumped off one of the highest buildings in the world.
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Too many people focus on writing what they think they should write, what should be in a song, what radio would want.
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What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain.
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A transition, by definition, means you start in one place and finish in another.
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There's no reason why anyone's job should become untouchable for the rest of their life.
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All life was a breath exhaled by God. All dying was a breath inhaled by God.
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My style changes every day. I would say its casual chic.
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To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.
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One way of working is just bring a group of totally different musicians together and encourage them to stick to their guns, not to do the thing that normally happens in a working situation where everyone homogenizes and concedes certain points - so eventually they're all playing in roughly the same style. I wanted quite the opposite of that. I wanted them to accent their styles, so that they pulled away. So there would be a kind of space in the middle where I could operate, and attempt to make these things coalesce in some way. In fact quite a lot of my stuff has arisen from that.
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Is there a necessary succession in style, or are these things pure chance?
