Michael Ventura Quotes

Quotes about:

• All paths cause pain, so to chose the safe over the audacious will not give you less pain, only less beauty.

  Michael Ventura

  Beauty, Pain, Giving

  Michael Ventura (1994). “The Zoo where You're Fed to God: A Novel”, Simon & Schuster

  61 Copy quote

• It may be that it is not given to us to know when we are angels. We may only be given to know when others are. This may be one of the reasons we need each other so.

  Michael Ventura

  Angel, Needs, May

  Michael Ventura (1994). “The Zoo where You're Fed to God: A Novel”, Simon & Schuster

  49 Copy quote

• Be careful how you choose your enemy, for you will come to resemble him. The moment you adapt your enemy's methods your enemy has won. The rest is suffering and historical opera.

  Michael Ventura

  Historical, Enemy, Suffering

  19 Copy quote

• Leave people alone when they tell you to leave them alone.
  If they mean it, they need it.

  Michael Ventura

  Mean, People, Needs

  Michael Ventura (1993). “Letters at 3am: reports on endarkenment”, Spring Pubns

  21 Copy quote

• Stop tolerating in your leaders what you would not tolerate in your friends.

  Michael Ventura

  Life, War, Justice

  8 Copy quote

• The value of having an inner map of the world as it is (not as it's broadcast) is this: it allows you to know that your task is larger than yourself. If you choose, just by virtue of being a decent person, you are entrusted with passing on something of value through a dark, crazy time-preserving your integrity, in your way, by your acts and your very breathing for those who will build again when this chaos exhausts itself.

  Michael Ventura

  Integrity, Crazy, Dark

  8 Copy quote

• We have a culture that is indirect in the extreme, where by the time you're five years old, you've watched tons of television, and have been subjected to what I call "the age of interruption," where everything is interrupted every minute. We have constant input from TV, computers, fax machines, telephones, etc. It's very hard for a modern American to have two hours of uninterrupted time. I know how it is because I insist on several hours of uninterrupted time each day, and I know how ruthless I have to be to get it.

  Michael Ventura

  Years, Two, Fax Machines

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

  4 Copy quote

• The people you have to lie to, own you. The things you have to lie about, own you.

  Michael Ventura

  Lying, Positive Thinking, Thinking

  8 Copy quote

• Creativity is an innate function in a human being, as we see in tribal peoples, who spent their considerable leisure time making religious artifacts and sacred art. That is what I would call a direct culture, in that everybody in it is directly in touch with all the elements, both of the culture and of the environment.

  Michael Ventura

  Religious, Art, Creativity

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

  14 Copy quote

• My employer uses twenty-six years of my life for every year I get to keep. And what do I get in return for the enormous thing I am giving? What do I get in return for my life?

  Michael Ventura

  Life, Years, Giving

  Michael Ventura (1993). “Letters at 3am: reports on endarkenment”, Spring Pubns

  7 Copy quote

• Our choices are truncated in evil's presence.

  Michael Ventura

  Evil, Choices, Our Choices

  Michael Ventura (1994). “The Zoo where You're Fed to God: A Novel”, Simon & Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• Most of us aren't very graceful about not having our needs met, when and how we want them met.

  Michael Ventura

  Needs, Want, Mets

  5 Copy quote

• To be physically astute and psychologically tended, yet morally insulated and conceptually blind--is to be crazy, not healthy.

  Michael Ventura

  Crazy, Healthy, Blind

  Michael Ventura (1993). “Letters at 3am: reports on endarkenment”, Spring Pubns

  14 Copy quote

• Good is not the opposite of evil, joy is the opposite of evil.

  Michael Ventura

  Opposites, Evil, Joy

  Michael Ventura (1994). “The Zoo where You're Fed to God: A Novel”, Simon & Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• I require and enforce as non-interrupted a state of living as you can get in America right now without going off to live by yourself in the mountains.

  Michael Ventura

  America, Mountain, States

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

  4 Copy quote

• We have to be realistic about the brutal demands a money culture puts on the psyche, and there is a great cost to this in terms of creativity. Look at the state of people at 65. How many of them become creative after having to survive in the money culture?

  Michael Ventura

  Creativity, People, Creative

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

  4 Copy quote

• The world of psychology and the world of normal life tends to look down on obsession. It's not good for you, and certainly not good for your relationships. It's not good for a lot of things, but it's the only way to make a work of art.

  Michael Ventura

  Art, Psychology, Looks

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

  4 Copy quote

• My spirit life very much depends on my work. My work very much depends on my spirit life. And I pray every day, as part of my own ritual, to a god I believe in, not a god somebody else believes in.

  Michael Ventura

  Believe, Spirit, Praying

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

  4 Copy quote

• An artist without obsession isn't worth a damn!

  Michael Ventura

  Artist, Obsession, Damn

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

  12 Copy quote

• I try to write into the heart of experience. Then, through the experience of the writing, that heart reveals itself to me. To write it down for others, as a door to go through it they choose, is the price of the experience, the price of the ticket. This is the demand that God, if you like, puts on you for being an artist.

  Michael Ventura

  Writing, Heart, Artist

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

  6 Copy quote

• Creativity is the vulnerability to spiritual and physical sensation, and to experience, combined with and acting upon a certain level of skill, combined with the compulsion or longing or need or desire to give.

  Michael Ventura

  Spiritual, Creativity, Skills

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

  6 Copy quote

• These things - the degree of vulnerability, the degree of skill, the degree of the longing to give - are influx all the time, And to lump all that under the word "creativity" assumes something much more static than it is. That's why an artist may be marvelous in her 20s, and be creating automatic crap in her 40s. A writer may be trivial in his 20s, and be writing incredibly in his 50s, because those things are always in flux.

  Michael Ventura

  Writing, Creativity, Artist

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

  4 Copy quote

• When the people clamor to be shielded from reality, when they praise their government for keeping things from them, when they choose to conduct their lives within the limits of whatever fantasy the government supplies, then they are no longer consenting to be governed, they are begging to be ruled.

  Michael Ventura

  Reality, Government, People

  Michael Ventura (1993). “Letters at 3am: reports on endarkenment”, Spring Pubns

  4 Copy quote

• The element of obsession is terribly important for an artist.

  Michael Ventura

  Artist, Important, Elements

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

  4 Copy quote

• My spirit life is also the medium in which I live. It's not something that comes and goes. Without one the other wouldn't exist.

  Michael Ventura

  Spirit, Life Is, Comes And Goes

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

  4 Copy quote

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