Michael Palmer Quotes & Sayings

You mean that's your idea of desire, with all those commas? — Michael Palmer

His memory is perfectly clear

and serves no good, no purpose
at all. He has seen things before

(the fly in the bottle,
the indeterminate will).

Santa Muerte, Saint Death,
we pray to you to swallow our breath. — Michael Palmer

You're taught from the day you start medical school that you're a god, that you can have power over life and death. So when your life starts to crumble, and the highest power you see is looking back in the mirror - and you know that power is flawed - it is very hard to get past that. — Michael Palmer

And you Mr. Ground-of-Wheat, Mr. Text, Mr. Is-Was,
can you calculate the ratio between wire and window . . . — Michael Palmer

Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside. -Gabe Singleton remembering his counselor's first advice- — Michael Palmer

When you find you don't like a character, you just type four letters and he's dead. — Michael Palmer

Remember, your dad loves you and he always wanted more for you than he ever wanted for himself. And if he pushes your buttons, just tell yourself that he's a master at doing that because he's the one who installed them in the first place. — Michael Palmer

Data is just like crude. It's valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used. It has to be changed into gas, plastic, chemicals, etc., to create a valuable entity that drives profitable activity; so must data be broken down, analyzed for it to have value. — Michael Palmer

The world can be hard, full of trickery,
Full of deceit,
Full of injustice,
Full of pain.
But there is an emptiness waiting, my friend--a great glowing emptiness,
Soft and fragrant with the essence of peace,
The essence of serenity.
You are almost there, my friend.
The magnificent emptiness is the eternal harbor for your soul.
Take my hand, friend.
Take my hand and take a step, just one more step,
And you are there. — Michael Palmer

Sometimes we have to hit bottom before we figure out how to really enjoy life. — Michael Palmer

an occasional birthday dinner, and of course Marathon — Michael Palmer

I just want people to get lost in the story and at the end kind of sag and say, 'That was fun.' It's hardly my desire for them to sit and think, 'What a great literary image.' — Michael Palmer

It seemed to me that I was put on earth to take care of people. That is what I should be doing, and I never got tired of it. — Michael Palmer

The only entitlement guaranteed should be the fruits of one's own labor. — Michael Palmer

a heavy, hooded wool — Michael Palmer

You must have me confused with myself — Michael Palmer

In this day and age, love is temporary and marriage is unnatural
the product of Madison Avenue advertising executives and television producers. — Michael Palmer

Aygi Cycle (4)

Coarse hawthorn
beloved uncle's
memory entwined

among its
gnarled and
armored limbs

copy of
Lolita by
his deathbed — Michael Palmer

might have been teleported to the — Michael Palmer

Prior to their discovery in 1917, phages had been linked to miracle waters - rivers in India and other places with the power to cure diseases from leprosy to cholera. Only later did scientists, examining a naturally occurring treatment for dysentery, discover these "cures" were phages, feasting on and eradicating the disease-causing bacteria. — Michael Palmer

The Classical Study (3)

The Master has forgotten his hat.
Without his hat he cannot fly.
Without his hat his dreams escape
up.

Without his hat he cannot tip
his hat to that woman passing by
whom he remembers
from somewhere, as in a dream,

a room in a dream or maybe a beach,
a beach by the sea,
blindingly white,
hatless, he and she. — Michael Palmer

country highway. He sensed that he was — Michael Palmer