Whenever you see a board up with "Trespassers will be prosecuted," trespass at once.
Virginia WoolfRead
Some men get the world, some men get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona. You're in with the former, but my God I don't envy the blood on your conscience.
Interpretation
The quote contrasts two types of experiences: wealth and moral compromise.
In this quote, James Ellroy reflects on the stark difference between those who achieve significant success and those who may gain fleeting pleasures but at a moral cost. It suggests that while some may have the world at their feet, this comes with responsibilities and ethical dilemmas, indicating that personal success may be tainted by the choices made along the way, filled with guilt and conscience issues.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the ethical implications of success.
Whenever you see a board up with "Trespassers will be prosecuted," trespass at once.
We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.
My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.
Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.
Whatever is happening, whatever is changing, whatever is going or not going according to my plans - I release my hold on all of it. I leave behind who I think I am, who I want to be, what I want the world to be. I come home to the great peace of the present moment.
When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him... For such is the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth.
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