Quotes from Anthony Marais

Humanity is as horrified and repulsed by real nature as it is by real death. Thus, we strike back against this formidable opponent with our sharpest weapon: our imagination. From this noble tool—born of necessity and elevated to beauty—culture was born, and the war against nature begun.

The hermit is he who needs a friend, and in the absence of a community has befriended himself.

Sympathy is to love thy neighbor. Empathy is to leave her alone.

Marriage is a lie—the most beautiful lie two people can share.

We are not born with a need for knowledge, but a hunger for it. Eve bit the apple and it has been gluttony ever since.

Reflection is nothing more than what it sounds, and pondering one's own life is about as productive as talking to one's image in a mirror: both acts are egocentric and neither produces a dialog. People who talk to themselves in public are not self-actualized; they're crazy.

No philosopher was ever apathetic. If there is no love, it is not philosophy.

If death is perfect enlightenment, life appears to be the perfect opposite.

Writers are compulsive liars desperately trying to tell themselves the truth.

Those who jump out of airplanes do not love life—they deny it, which, of course, is not done without a certain naughty exhilaration. Like children they relish tugging on the apron of Mother Nature, as long as she doesn't turn and slap them.

If divorce is like death, then is not the perpetration of divorce a kind of murder? That is, are we not risking putting ourselves through the same torment—the same sleepless nights, feelings of persecution and guilt, the regret—as one of those pathetic characters from a Dostoevsky novel? It's like you've just struck your wife with a candelabra and now you're looking at her lifeless body on the floor, and suddenly she looks pretty.

Atheists believe simplicity is a virtue when it is precisely this that weighs so heavily on their souls.

When a scientist splits an atom, the event is locked away like a jewel in a castle, funneling down to the public through a myriad of institutions. But when an artist stumbles upon the key to unleashing universal evil, the forbidden fruit of his painstaking labor is packaged and sold at every corner store from Bangor to Bangkok. I'm still unsure whether this is the result of a lack of respect for artists (compared to scientists) or the moral corruption of artists (compared to scientists).

There are but two states to the primitive mind: warring and boring.

It is said that the depressive has a clearer view of reality than does the euphoric. Perhaps, but the euphoric has a clearer view of life.

There is nothing wrong with being fascinated by the dark side of life, and ourselves, but woe to those who think this is representative of reality. All too many of us sit in our homes watching TV, falling prey to the delusion that the world is getting worse. If these sorry individuals spent more time meeting their neighbors, they'd discover that 95% of their peers are fine people.

Skin color or the shape of one's nose cannot be the criteria upon which individuals are judged. Black is not beautiful; it's racist. Being African-American, conscious of your culture, fascinated by your history, this is beautiful—and really has nothing to do with putting a color chart next to your face.

Those who take thinking seriously have a serious problem—ignorance and arrogance commingle.

Sexual harassment is using what Nature gave us to take what isn't ours. It's an act of violence not only against an individual, but the group—and it inevitably meets with the wrath of the group.

No philosopher was ever apathetic. If there is no love, it is not philosophy.

To measure up takes skill, but to err is an art.

We would like to think of death as a release from the pressures of existence, but this is a fatally mistaken thought: it is the ultimate culmination of those pressures.