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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #bruce
I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known. ↗
Bruce has wrestled with his moods, and a psyche genetically prone to extremes, for most of his adult life. Decades of psychotherapy helped reveal and cast light on some of his most primal traumas and conflicts, but his raw moods, and occasional descents into full-blown depression, never quite went away. "You go through periods of being good, then something stimulates it," he says. "The clock, some memory. You never know. The mind wants to link all your feelings to a cause. I'm feeling that because I'm doing this, or because that happened." Eventually Bruce realized that his worst moods had nothing to do with what was actually taking place in his life. Awful, stressful things could happen - conflicts, stress, disappointments, death - and he'd be unflappable. Then things would be peaceful and easy and he'd find himself on his knees. "You're going along fine, and then boom, it hits you. Things that just come from way down in the well. Completely noncasual, but it's part of your DNA, part of the way your body cycles." Bruce knows his particular brain chemistry will never leave him completely in the clear. "You manage it, you learn and evolve, but another recognition you gotta have is that these are the cards you were dealt," he says. "These things are never going to be out of your life. You gotta be constantly vigilant and realistic about these things. ↗
A few years ago, when I was hitchhiking through Laramie, Wyoming, I met an old and infertile man named John. I told him, “I think I’d have made a good son, John. But I’d have made an even better Johnson.” He nodded as he took a long drag from his cigarette before he said, “I think I would have made a good Robert Derrick. But I'd have made an even better Derrick Robert.” I was silent for a few minutes, because I knew all too well what he meant. I’ve often felt I’d have made a great Bruce Robert, and an even better Robert the Bruce than Robert the Bruce ever was. Because, as many people have told me, “You can take all the Bruces in the world, including Mr. Willis, and you’d be the only one who could simply be called ‘The Bruce.’” But you couldn’t call me “The Boss,” because that title belongs to another Bruce. ↗
#funny #hitchhiking #humor #humour #infertile
Trying to imagine E. M. Forster, who found Ulysses indecorous, at a London performance of Lenny Bruce—to which in fact he was once taken. Trying to imagine the same for a time-transported Nathaniel Hawthorne—who during his first visit to Europe was even shocked by the profusion of naked statues. ↗
#lenny-bruce #m-forster #nathaniel-hawthorne #norms #puritanism