17 Quotes by Steve Rasnic Tem

For most of my life I’ve been a listener. At least in the beginning, I think the reason I listened so intently was to have a chance of hearing the train before it ran over me.

We carry our fears with us wherever we go. We pack them neatly, holding them close because if we lost them, where would we be?

Paranoia is just having the right information.” – William S. Burroughs.

You can’t leave your fears behind,’ he’d say, ’until first you live inside them. You have to live inside your house of fear.

I would have imagined that to be unimaginable. Sometimes I still do.

Movies and books and all such products of the imagination are terrible things for most people because they make them believe that they can be other than what they actually are. Terrible and beautiful things. People sit and wait for the transformation, which never comes, as if they might arise from their chairs or depart the theater as other people entirely. Instead all that is left to them is to gather their addictions around them and to sing their onion songs.

Some people, I believe, are paid for dreaming. But most, I think, are punished.

Each morning we awaken to find that life is a bit less understandable. Each morning we awaken to the disappearance of the known. Each morning we awaken to discover that we have missed the last bus for the life to come.