| Quotes |
| "Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew sush lovely pictures?" Alex from "An Clockwork Orange" |
| "Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenced." Mark 9:44 |
| "Mr. and Mrs. America - you are wrong I am not the King of the Jews nor am I a hippie cult leader. I am what you have made of me and the mad dog devil killer fiend leper is a reflection of your society... Whatever the outcome of this madness that you call a fair trial or Christian justice, you can know this: In my mind's eye my thoughts light fires in your cities." Charles Manson during his trial |
| In the spring, families in the suburbs of New Orleans-Metairie, Jefferson, Lafayette-hang wreaths on their front doors. Gay straw wreaths of gold and purple and green, wreaths with bells and froths of ribbons trailing down, blowing, tangling in the warm wind. The children have king cake parties. Each slice of cake is iced with a different sweet, sticky topping-candied cherries and colored sugar are favorites-and the child who finds a pink plastic baby in his slice will enjoy a year of good luck. The baby represents the infant Christ, and children seldom choke on it. Jesus loves little children. The adults buy spangled cat's-eye maks for masquerades, and other women's husbands pull other men's wifes to them under the cover of Spanish moss and annoymity, hot silk and desperate searching tongues and the wet ground and the ghostly white scent of magnolias opening in the night, the colored paper lanterns on the veranda in the distance. In the French Quarters the liquor flows like milk. Strings of bright cheap beads hang from wrought-iron balconies and adorn sweaty necks. After parades the beads lie scattered in the streets, the royalty of gutter trash, gaudy among the cigarette butts and cans and plastic Hurricane glasses. The sky is purple, the flare of a match behind a cupped hand is gold; the liquor is green, bright green, made from a thousand herbs, made from altars. Those who know enought to drink Charteuse at Mardi Gras are lucky, because the distilled essence of the town burns in their bellies. Charteuse glows in the dark, and if you drink enough of it, your eyes will turn bright green. from "Lost Souls" by Poppy Z. Brite |