Quotes on Totems

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death - ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.

You must be absolutely honest and true in the depicting of a totem for meaning is attached to every line. You must be most particular about detail and proportion.

I think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood.

In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.

Oil is like a wild animal. Whoever captures it has it.

Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.

And it rained a fever. And it rained a silence. And it rained a sacrifice. And it rained a miracle. And it rained sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.