reflections

Thursday, October 23, 2008
***********************************************
ON GOD
*****************************************
I don't believe in the God of priests, mullahs, and holy scriptures, but I also believe you may let go of God ( whoever he may or may not be) but God will never let you go.
*
ON STYLE
***********************
Hit and run. Make your point and move to the next. If you make sense they will get the message. If you don't make sense, at least you haven't wasted their time and yours.
*
ON CRITICS
*************************
To how many of my critics I could say, Anyone who thinks as you do, does not deserve Naregatsi, Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Zarian, and Massikian. These gentlemen dedicated their lives in an effort to expand your horizons and you have deliberately chosen to live as though they never wrote a single line.
*
ON RECYCLING ENEMY PROPAGANDA
******************************************************
The ignorance of some Armenians is such that some of them go as far as recycling enemy propaganda in the name of patriotism. As when they say, “Our literature and culture flourished during the Soviet era,” which amounts to saying Russian literature flourished under Stalin, and German culture reached its apex under Hitler, Goebbels, and Himmler.
*
QUESTION
************************
Why anyone in his right mind would read me if he can read Shakespeare and Tolstoy? -- unless it is for the pleasure of verbally abusing a fellow Armenian simply because he refuses to flatter his colossal ego.
*
ON SUPERPATRIOTS
**********************************
A good Armenian superpatriot hates not only all Turks but also the whole world including and above all fellow Armenians who don't share his limitations and prejudices.
#
Friday, October 24, 2008
***********************************************
THE CREAM OF THE CRAP
*****************************************
With the right camera angle and lighting, fragments in the life of the most pious and respectable married couple in the world could be made into a pornographic movie. That's what my critics do with my ideas.
*
Ignored, misunderstood, insulted, rejected, silenced, starved, exiled, shot – at long last Armenian writers are now for all practical purposes extinct. Where Talaat and Stalin failed, our bosses, bishops, benefactors and their assorted hirelings succeeded. Nothing succeeds like perseverance.
*
Heaven or hell – I don't care where I end up as long as it's where my friends are. I can't imagine happiness surrounded by dupes and charlatans.
*
Anonymous does not mean faceless. No degree of anonymity can hide the ego of a loud-mouth phony with the guts of a mouse and the memory of an elephant.
*
It happens to me all the time. After they find out what I am against, they accuse me of being for it. It makes sense, no?
*
If you speak the truth to a liar, he will come up with a bigger lie; and the bigger the better. And what could be bigger than choosing one's own tribe as God's Chosen, or one's own race as the Superior Race. And it came to pass that the Superior almost exterminated the Chosen, and the dumbest did the same to the smartest (self-assessed, of course).
#
Saturday, October 25, 2008
***********************************************
LIARS
*****************************************
Sooner or later reality will step in and let you know in no uncertain terms that you are on the wrong track – as when after 600 years of subservience....
*
If I repeat myself it's because there are ten thousand lies but only one truth.
*
I am an easy target. I can be silenced and buried as easily as a dog. But who can bury Socrates, Voltaire, and Gandhi whose ideas I have been paraphrasing?
*
Immortality? I have already achieved it in the minds of our liars.
*
Plato says somewhere that an honest man can never be as wealthy as a crook because, he explains, an honest man will employ only honest means to acquire his wealth, whereas a crook will employ honest as well as dishonest means. This may explain why you will never hear one of our benefactors say that he is an avid reader of Plato's dialogs.
*
Hirelings are not in the habit of questioning the competence and integrity of their bosses. To the publishers, editors, and moderators who have silenced me, I say: If a nation cannot survive the opinions of a minor scribbler, can it be worth saving?
*
When it comes to preserving their power, our bosses are more than willing to sacrifice the demands of justice and fundamental human rights. But when justice and human rights are denied to a single man, everyone should feel threatened.
*
A prophet is any man who speak about what he sees as opposed to what he is told to see.
#