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Richard Koch Quotes

• For you and for me the highest moment, the keenest joy, is not when our minds dominate but when we lose our minds… - View Quote Details on For you and for me the highest moment, the keenest…
• This image of herself as a not ordinary women, an image which was trembling now in his eyes, might suddenly disappear. Nothing more difficult to live up to than men’s dreams. - View Quote Details on This image of herself as a not ordinary women, an…
• In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude. But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made to match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again. And then in solitude, in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again. - View Quote Details on In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all…
• Electric flesh-arrows traversing the body. A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids. A foam of music falls over the ears. It is the gong of the orgasm. - View Quote Details on Electric flesh-arrows traversing the body. A rainbow of color strikes…
• The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. Most of the writing today which is called fiction contains such a poverty of language, such triteness, that it is a shrunken, diminished world we enter, poorer and more formless than the poorest cripple deprived of ears and eyes and tongue. The writer’s responsibility is to increase, develop our senses, expand our vision, heighten our awareness and enrich our articulateness. - View Quote Details on The role of the writer is not to say what…
• One handles truths like dynamite. Literature is one vast hypocrisy, a giant deception, treachery. All writers have concealed more than they revealed. - View Quote Details on One handles truths like dynamite. Literature is one vast hypocrisy,…
• The necessity for fiction was probably born of the problem of taboo on certain revelations. It was not only a need of the imagination but an answer to the limitations placed on portrayal of others. - View Quote Details on The necessity for fiction was probably born of the problem…
• My life is slowed up by thought and the need to understand what I am living. - View Quote Details on My life is slowed up by thought and the need…
• Experience teaches acceptance of the imperfect as life. - View Quote Details on Experience teaches acceptance of the imperfect as life.
• When she did finally fall asleep it was the restless sleep of the night watchman continuously aware of danger and of the treacheries of time seeking to cheat her by permitting clocks to strike the passing hours when she was not awake to grasp their contents. - View Quote Details on When she did finally fall asleep it was the restless…
• Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art. - View Quote Details on Why one writes is a question I can answer easily,…
• My first vision of earth was water veiled. I am of the race of men and women who see all things through this curtain of sea and my eyes are the color of water. I looked with chameleon eyes upon the changing face of the world, looked with anonymous vision upon my uncompleted self. I remember my first birth in water. - View Quote Details on My first vision of earth was water veiled. I am…
• Those who can create wealth — and know that they can — are able to dictate their own terms. Wealth is a means to happiness, but it is not the main one. What most people want is control over their lives. They want the ability to choose how they live: what work they do, the way they interact with friends and colleagues, the quality of their personal relationships, the way they view themselves. - View Quote Details on Those who can create wealth — and know that they…
• The morning I got up to begin this book I coughed. Something was coming out of my throat: it was strangling me. I broke the thread which held it and yanked it out. I went back to bed and said: I have just spat out my heart. - View Quote Details on The morning I got up to begin this book I…
• The artist is the only one who knows that the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements. It is a materialization, an incarnation of his inner world. Then he hopes to attract others into it. He hopes to impose his particular vision and share it with others. And when the second stage is not reached, the brave artist continues nevertheless. The few moments of communion with the world are worth the pain, for it is a world for others, an inheritance for others, a gift to others, in the end. When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
  We also write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely. We write as the birds sing, as the primitives dance their rituals. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it. When I don’t write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing. - View Quote Details on The artist is the only one who knows that the…
• He left me at my hotel at 3:00 AM murmuring: “You’re marvelous.” - View Quote Details on He left me at my hotel at 3:00 AM murmuring:…
• Everything but happiness is neurosis. - View Quote Details on Everything but happiness is neurosis.
• Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. - View Quote Details on Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the…
• I say quotations are literary. They are good only when dealing with ideas, not with experience. Experience should be pure, unique. - View Quote Details on I say quotations are literary. They are good only when…
• Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself. - View Quote Details on Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.
• We are beginning to see the influence of dream upon reality and reality upon dream. - View Quote Details on We are beginning to see the influence of dream upon…
• There will never be darkness because in both of us there’s always movement, renewal, surprises. I have never known stagnation. Not even introspection has been a still experience… - View Quote Details on There will never be darkness because in both of us…
• Worlds self made are so full of monsters and demons. - View Quote Details on Worlds self made are so full of monsters and demons.
• The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive. - View Quote Details on The poet is one who is able to keep the…
• If only we could all escape from this house of incest, where we only love ourselves in the other, if only I could save you all from yourselves. - View Quote Details on If only we could all escape from this house of…
• Love is the axis and breath of my life. The art I produce is a byproduct, an excrescence of love, the song I sing, the joy which must explode, the overabundance — that is all! - View Quote Details on Love is the axis and breath of my life. The…
• The dream has to be translated into reality. - View Quote Details on The dream has to be translated into reality.
• There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic. - View Quote Details on There are very few human beings who receive the truth,…
• At a lecture I am asked to pronounce my name three times. I try to be slow and emphatic, “Anaïs — Anaïs — Anaïs. You just say “Anna” and then add “ees,” with the accent on the “ees.” - View Quote Details on At a lecture I am asked to pronounce my name…
• Every word you wrote I ate, as if it were manna. Finding one’s self in a book is a second birth; and you are the only one who knows that at times men behave like women and women like men, and that all these distinctions are mock distinctions. - View Quote Details on Every word you wrote I ate, as if it were…
• Creation which cannot express itself becomes madness. - View Quote Details on Creation which cannot express itself becomes madness.
• I think that natural truths will cease to be spat at us like insults, that aesthetics will once more be linked with ethics, and that people will become aware that in casting out aesthetics that they also cast out a respect for human life, a respect for creation, a respect for spiritual values. Aesthetics was an expression of man’s need to be in love with his world. The cult of ugliness is a regression. It destroys our appetite, our love for our world. - View Quote Details on I think that natural truths will cease to be spat…
• Art is the method of levitation, in order to separate one’s self from enslavement by the earth. - View Quote Details on Art is the method of levitation, in order to separate…
• We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are. - View Quote Details on We don’t see things as they are, we see things…
• The creative personality never remains fixed on the first world it discovers. It never resigns itself to anything. - View Quote Details on The creative personality never remains fixed on the first world…
• The enemy of a love is never outside, it’s not a man or woman, it’s what we lack in ourselves. - View Quote Details on The enemy of a love is never outside, it’s not…
• He was insane with anger. Or is all insanity anger? - View Quote Details on He was insane with anger. Or is all insanity anger?
• Man can never know the kind of loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in a woman’s womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. The woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which he has bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love is a taking of man within her, and act of birth and rebirth, of child bearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to BE. But for a woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment when man rests inside of her. - View Quote Details on Man can never know the kind of loneliness a woman…
• You cannot save people, you can only love them. - View Quote Details on You cannot save people, you can only love them.
• This abdiction of life demanded of the artist is to be achieved only relatively. Most artists have retired too absolutely; they grow rusty, inflexible to the flow of currents. - View Quote Details on This abdiction of life demanded of the artist is to…
• I see myself wrapped in lies, which do not seem to penetrate my soul, as if they are not really a part of me. They are like costumes. - View Quote Details on I see myself wrapped in lies, which do not seem…
• I had always believed in Andre Breton ’s freedom, to write as one thinks, in the order and disorder in which one feels in thinks, to follow sensations and absurd correlations of events and images, to trust to the new realms they lead one into. “The cult of the marvelous.” Also the cult of the unconscious leadership, the cult of mystery, the evasion of false logic. The cult of the unconscious as proclaimed by Rimbaud. It is not madness. It is an effort to transcend the rigidities and the patterns made by the rational mind. - View Quote Details on I had always believed in Andre Breton ’s freedom, to…
• You are so terribly nimble, so clever. I distrust your cleverness. You make a wonderful pattern, everything is in its place, it looks convincingly clear, too clear. And meanwhile, where are you? Not on the clear surface of your ideas, but you have already sunk deeper, into darker regions, so that one only thinks one has been given all your thoughts, one only imagines you have emptied yourself in that clarity. But there are layers and layers — you’re bottomless, unfathomable. Your clearness is deceptive. You are the thinker who arouses most confusion in me, most doubt, most disturbance. - View Quote Details on You are so terribly nimble, so clever. I distrust your…
• When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with. - View Quote Details on When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced…
• To withhold from living is to die… the more you give of yourself to life the more life nourishes you. - View Quote Details on To withhold from living is to die… the more you…
• My ideas usually come not at the desk writing but in the midst of living. - View Quote Details on My ideas usually come not at the desk writing but…
• Human beings can reach such desperate solitude that they may cross a boundary beyond which words cannot serve, and at such moments there is nothing left for them but to bark. - View Quote Details on Human beings can reach such desperate solitude that they may…
• It was a misunderstanding to stress the dream like quality of the novels. What I meant to stress was the interrelation between dream and life, between dream and action. - View Quote Details on It was a misunderstanding to stress the dream like quality…
• You are like a person who consumes herself in love and giving and does not know the miracles that are born of this. - View Quote Details on You are like a person who consumes herself in love…
• In creation alone there is the possibility of perfection. - View Quote Details on In creation alone there is the possibility of perfection.

About Richard Koch

Richard Koch (born 1950 ) is a former management consultant, entrepreneur and writer of several books on how to apply the Pareto principle (80/20 rule) in all walks of life.

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