Barry Hughart Quotes

Immortality is a meaningless word unless invulnerability goes with it. ~ Barry Hughart

Master Li, how are we going to murder a man who laughs at axes?" I asked.
We are going to experiment, dear boy. Our first order of business will be to find a deranged alchemist, which should not be very difficult. China," said Master Li, "is overstocked with deranged alchemists. ~ Barry Hughart

Don't be ashamed of reliving your childhood, Ox, because all of us must do it now and then to maintain our sanity. ~ Barry Hughart

A fool will study for twenty or thirty years and learn how to do something, but a wise man will study for twenty or thirty minutes and become an expert. In this world, it isn't ability that counts, but authority. ~ Barry Hughart

The supernatural can be very annoying until one finds the key that transforms it into science," he observed mildly ... "Come on, Ox, let's go out and get killed. ~ Barry Hughart

Mystery and terror are the bulwarks of tyranny. ~ Barry Hughart

Fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can. ~ Barry Hughart

Boy, just look at the soul shining through my eyes! It's like a goddamned flower! ~ Barry Hughart

'Immortality is only for the gods,' he whispered. 'I wonder how they can stand it.' ~ Barry Hughart

'O great and mighty Master Li, pray impart to me the Secret of Wisdom!' he bawled.
'Take a large bowl,' I said. 'Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, logic, and lunacy. Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization, bellow kan pei - which means "dry cup" - and drink to the dregs.'
Procopius stared at me. 'And I will be wise?' he asked.
'Better,' I said. 'You will be Chinese.' ~ Barry Hughart

Blessed are the idiots, for they are happiest people on earth. ~ Barry Hughart

Key Rabbit, allow me to bore you with a comparison of your wife and a beautiful woman," I said. "In the morning a beauty must lie in bed for three or four hours gathering strength for another mighty battle with Nature. Then, after being bathed and toweled by her maids, she loosens her hair in the Cascade of Teasing Willows Style, paints her eyebrows in the Distant Mountain Range Style, anoints herself with the Nine Bends of the River Diving-water Perfume, applies rouge, mascara, and eye shadow, and covers the whole works with a good two inches of the Powder of the Nonchalant Approach. Then she dresses in a plum-blossom patterned tunic with matching skirt and stockings, adds four or five pounds of jewelry, looks in the mirror for any visible sign of humanity and is relieved to find none, checks her makeup to be sure that it has hardened into an immovable mask, sprinkles herself with the Hundred Ingredients Perfume of the Heavenly Spirits who Descended in the Rain Shower, and minces with tiny steps toward the new day. Which, like any other day, will consist of gossip and giggles. ~ Barry Hughart

The emotional health of a village depended upon having a man whom everyone loved to hate, and Heaven had blessed us with two of them. ~ Barry Hughart

Miser Shen is preparing to spend the night with a goat. ~ Barry Hughart

Everybody knows that the soul of a cat is formed from the composite souls of nine debauched nuns who failed in their vows. ~ Barry Hughart

To cherish perfection is to commit creative suicide, and every true artist knows that a masterpiece is an accident that should be burned. ~ Barry Hughart

Ox, what occupation is most closely linked to insanity?'
'Emperor,' I said promptly. ~ Barry Hughart

...Men cannot come any closer to immortality without going insane. ~ Barry Hughart

The mind is a miser," he said. "Nothing is ever thrown away, and it's amazing what you can find if you dig deep enough. ~ Barry Hughart

Our senses are woefully limited. Our brains are but tiny candles flickering in an infinity of darkness. Our only wisdom is to admit that we cannot understand, and since we cannot understand we must do the best we can with faith. which is our only talent. The greatest act of faith we are capable of is that of loving another more than we love ourselves, and occasionally we can be quite good at it. ~ Barry Hughart

It was quite a shock for me to discover that crime was so easy that it was boring. I reluctantly turned to scholarship. ~ Barry Hughart

Master Li turned bright red while he scorched the air with the Sixty Sequential Sacrileges with which he had won the all-China Freestyle Blasphemy Competition in Hangchow three years in a row. ~ Barry Hughart

I used to love history class. I can still quote whole passages by heart: "When the emperor entered the Hall of Balming Virtue, a violent wind came from a dark corner, and out of it slithered a giant serpent that coiled around the throne. The emperor fainted, and that night earthquakes struck Loyang, and waves swept the shores, and cranes shrieked in the marshes. On the fifth day of the sixth moon a long trail of black mist floated into the Hall of Concubines, and hot and cold became confused, and a hen turned into a rooster, and a woman turned into a man, and flesh fell from the skies." Now, that is grand stuff, just the thing to give to growing boys, and then we were old enough to read the greatest of all historians. This is what Ssu-ma Ch'ien had to say about the exact same subject: "The Chou Dynasty was nearing collapse." Bah. ~ Barry Hughart

Show me a quest for personal immortality and I'll show you a path through a slaughterhouse, and the incense of personal divinity is the stench of other people's corpses. ~ Barry Hughart

Nothing on the face of this earth - and I do mean nothing - is half so dangerous as a children's story that happens to be real... ~ Barry Hughart

People who look at art don't really - don't go with the artist. They don't sort of accept what he or she has done and kind of go with it. There are always - either there's too much color or not enough color, either it's not conceptual enough or it's too conceptual. In other words, most criticism isn't what the viewer expected that it would do based on what they think you have done and that's good as far as I'm concerned. ~ Robert Barry

I always took photographs. I photographed a lot of trees, by the way, which is another image I used often in my work, the tree image. ~ Robert Barry

I am hell with a knife and there is nothing I can really do about it but try and keep my mouth shut and try not to let it show. ~ Lynda Barry

Hardware: where the people in your company's software section will tell you the problem is. Software: where the people in your company's hardware section will tell you the problem is. ~ Dave Barry

We all should know what the Right's agenda is here: privatize education, kill public schools, and transfer the teaching of the young to private entities. ~ Barry W. Lynn

Adding the second option creates a conflict, forcing a trade-off between price and quality. ~ Barry Schwartz

We all have common emotions. And, and our experiences may not be all common but the emotions sure are. ~ Jeff Barry

Focus on what makes you happy, and do what gives meaning to your life ~ Barry Schwartz

It's amazing how much a frail old woman will confide in a visiting nurse.' She laughed and shook her head. 'Imagine pouring out your soul to someone stooped over a bedpan.' She took another puff, and once more blew smoke at me. I took hold of her wrist. ~ Barry Brennessel

Living in your genome is the history of our species. ~ Barry Schuler

Head Smashed In, may I help you? ~ Dave Barry

Rowing it was pointed out, was a sport that risked few injuries. So it was, I ould discover, but only if you did it right. ~ Barry S. Strauss

The Dutch look like a huge jar of marmalade. ~ Barry Davies

I don't pretend that I can read minds. I don't believe anybody can read minds. In other words, I don't believe in psychics. ~ Keith Barry

So for some reason everybody makes this huge deal about pandas. I don't know why. They never actually do anything except eat and poop. But they're really famous." "Yeah," said Suzana. "They're like the Kardashians of zoo animals. ~ Dave Barry

Reflectors need to be placed on trees every 50 feet so people can hike at night with flashlights. ~ Dave Barry

Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear. ~ Dave Barry

When you observe yourself you must not condemn or approve what you see. If you tell a lie there is no need to judge your-self. ~ Barry Long

Last month we had to sit through a presentation on eliminating redundancy, and it was a bunch of Power Point slides, plus a guy reading out what was on the slides, and then he gave us all hard copies. I don't understand these things. ~ Max Barry

I don't sign for white people. ~ Barry Bonds

The kneading of memory makes the dough of fiction, which, as we know, can go on yeasting for ever ... ~ Barry Unsworth

Charlie Polard was a former news anchor, now field reporter, whose star had been falling rapidly the past year. Consequently, his constant need to use Jack Daniels as his career coach had caused him to nearly miss several assignments. ~ Barry Sierer

If you knew at the outset what you understood at the end, would you make the same choices, take the same risks, accept the same sacrifices? No. No one would. You can't appreciate the weight of that burden until after you've assumed it. You can't comprehend what it really means. ~ Barry Eisler

As I do not seem able much to heal, then maybe I can simply be a responsible witness to the miracle of the ordinary soul. ~ Sebastian Barry

A lot of us [comedians] are drawn to the stage or show business or whatever because we didn't feel so great about ourselves, and we didn't know how to do anything about that, so we sought external approval. ~ Barry Crimmins

The world begins anew with every birth, my father used to say. He forgot to say, with every death it ends. Or did not think he needed to. Because for a goodly part of his life he worked in a graveyard. ~ Sebastian Barry

Print neatly. That's the kind of advice that the IRS considers a "dynamite" tax tip. If you ask them a real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless. ~ Dave Barry

Men are moral beings in their untrammelled nature. If constraint and coercion can once be removed they will be happy and if they are happy they will also be good ... ~ Barry Unsworth

As long as you're having fun, that's the key. The moment it becomes a grind, it's over. ~ Barry Gibb

You can blow on the dice all you want, but whether they come up 'seven' is still a function of random luck. ~ Barry Ritholtz

If we become uncomfortable in any given moment, we can look at a flower, a pebble in the street or the tire on our car and be grateful. We can gaze at a person in the distance or at a cloud in the sky and be appreciative. We can smile at a stranger, hug someone we know or tidy a disorganized shelf and be thankful for the opportunity. If we choose gratitude, we will be happy! ~ Barry Neil Kaufman

To disagree one doesnt have to be disagreeable ~ Barry M. Goldwater

We're deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you can tell from the fact that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick urging you to purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him right in his bowl full of jelly. ~ Dave Barry

Classical music gradually lost popularity because it is too complicated: you need twenty-five or thirty skilled musicians just to hum it properly. So people began to develop regular music. ~ Dave Barry

The oars game me power but also taught me humility. ~ Barry S. Strauss

I hate to speak for the whole society, but I will. I'm a journalist, it's my job. There's been something of a reaction against political correctness. Needless to say, the government hasn't caught up yet. ~ Dave Barry

We are on the Colorado ... that means something more to me than thoughts of electrical power or a harnessed river. ~ Barry Goldwater

Just four or five hours later we begin to see a country whose beauty penetrates our bones. I say beauty I mean beauty. Oftentimes in America you could go stark mad from the ugliness of things. Grass that goes for a thousand miles and never a hill to break it. I ain't saying there ain't beauty on the plains when well there is. But you ain't long travelling on the plains when you begin to feel clear loco. You can rise up out of your saddle and sort of look down on yourself riding, it's as if the stern and relentless monotony makes you die, come back to life, and die again. Your brain is molten in its bowl of bones and you just seeing atrocious wonders everywhere. The mosquitoes have your hide for supper and you are one hallucinating lunatic then. But now in the far distance we see a land begin to be suggested as if maybe a man was out there painting with a huge brush. ~ Sebastian Barry

Whenever you hear a discussion about the short-term swings in any given stock's price, your immediate thought should be whether it matters to why you are investing. ~ Barry Ritholtz

When I get a very generous introduction like that I explain that I'm emotionally moved, but on the other hand I'm Irish and the Irish are very emotionally moved. My mother is Irish and she cries during beer commercials. ~ Barry McCaffrey

I didn't see eye to eye with young Barry Bingham," the publisher, Hollenbach says. "I told him respectfully that I didn't think there was anything wrong with this city that a handful of well-placed funerals wouldn't cure.") ~ Alec Macgillis