A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.
Interpretation
This quote captures the fierce beauty of a cat when it is angry, likening its rage to a mesmerizing fire.
William S. Burroughs uses vivid imagery to convey the intense and striking nature of a cat's rage. Describing the cat's fur standing on end and its eyes blazing, he illustrates a moment where the cat's emotional response transforms it into a creature of captivating beauty, emphasizing how nature exudes its own form of art through the expressions of its creatures.
In practice
During a storytelling session about pets, I used this quote to emphasize the fierce yet majestic nature of cats.
God save the Queen and a fascist regime β¦ a flabby toothless fascism, to be sure. Never go too far in any direction, is the basic law on which Limey-Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole sinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top. The English have gone soft in the outhouse. England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlash and bad karma of empire
Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't.
There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.
Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered.
Language is a virus from outer space.
One very important aspect of art is that it makes people aware of what they know and donβt know they know... Once the breakthrough is made, there is a permanent expansion of awareness. But there is always a reaction of rage, of outrage, at the first breakthrough... So the artist, then, expands awareness. And once the breakthrough is made, this becomes part of the general awareness.
From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow.
The ecological crisis we face is so obvious that it becomes easy...to join the dots and see that everything is interconnected. This is the ecological thought. And the more we consider it, the more our world opens up." The ecological thought "...is a vast, sprawling mesh of interconnection without a definite center or edge. It is radical intimacy, coexistence with other beings, sentient and otherwise.
O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?
Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?
It's beautiful," said Mort softly. "What is it?" THE SUN IS UNDER THE DISC, said Death. "Is it like this every night?" EVERY NIGHT, said Death. NATURE'S LIKE THAT. "Doesn't anyone know?" ME. YOU. THE GODS. GOOD, ISN'T IT? "Gosh!" Death leaned over the saddle and looked down at the kingdoms of the world. I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.
The dance of the flower in the wind, in the sun, in the rain, cannot be understood by the head; the heart has to be open for it.
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