Omnibus

Anthony Burgess:
I remember an old proverb. It says that, uh, youth, um, thinks itself wise just as drunk men think themselves sober. Youth is not wise! Youth knows... youth knows nothing about life! Youth knows nothing about anything except for a mass of cliches which for the most part through the media of pop songs are just foisted on them by middle-aged entrepreneurs and exploiters who should know better. When we start thinking that pop music is close to God, then we'll think pop music is aesthetically better than it is. And it's only the aesthetic value of pop music that we're really concerned with. I mean the only way we can judge Wagner or Beethoven or... or any other composer is aesthetically. We don't regard Wagner or Beethoven nor Shakespeare or Milton as... as great teachers. When we start claiming for Lennon or McCartney or the Maharishi or any other of these pop prophets the ability to transport us to, um, to a region where God becomes manifest then I see red. We're satisfied with our little long playing record, ten pop numbers or thereabouts a side. This is great art, we've been told this by the great pundits of our age. And in consequence why should we bother to learn? There's nothing more delightful than to be told: "You don't have to learn, my boy. There's nothing in it. Modern art? There's nothing in it." When you're told these things you sit down with a sigh of relief: "Thank God I don't have to learn, I don't have to travel, I don't have to exert myself in the slightest. I am what I am. Youth is youth. Pop is pop. There's no need to progress. There's no need to do anything. Let us sit down, smoke our marijuana, an admirable thing in itself but not the end of anything, let us listen to our records and life has become the single moment. And the single moment is eternity. We're with God. Finis!

Fan queuing at concert:
I'm just a space cadet.. he's the commander.

Fan 1:
I think we all feel the same way, don't we?

Fan 2:
Music, in general, is an important part of all our lives.

Fan 1:
Yeah, Exactly

Fan 2:
We're big fans.

Fan 1:
And Bowie, we thought is the best

Fan 3:
God!

Fan 2:
He intentionally keeps himself a mystery.

Fan 3:
Yeah, right.

Fan 2:
He's always trying to be somebody else onstage; he keeps his own personality a complete mystery. It adds to the aura, makes him a more interesting person.

Himself:
Probably my life will be easier, and yours too, if I smoke a joint.

Hunter S. Thompson:
Right now I think its in my interest and ours perhaps and maybe in the interest of the greater good for me to smoke a joint and calm down.

Hunter S. Thompson:
[after dropping a bag on the ground] Oh no! God, help us Jesus, why does this happen in the end?

Hunter S. Thompson:
[after spilling his drink on the ground] Yes! In front of the camera and it will be on film, won't it? The way, well, the water's without chlorophyll, and the whiskey kills the, what would be the chlorophyll substitute so everytime I get a drink, the ice, I put the drink in the ice and then the whole thing into the grass, giving the ice enough time to absorb the chlorophyll. I now have enough chlorophyll to get back to the drink. That's why I'm so healthy folks, always roll my ice in chlorophyll before I drink whiskey. Alright, what were we saying?

(himself):
I think what I liked from the first about Harry Potter was that mix of - um - I won't say fantasy, because I think of it as a dirty word, and fantasy doesn't really work unless it's grounded in reality, and it's the reality that appealed to me in a sense. What's woven into them is a true history of the English folkloric tradition of magic. She [J.K. Rowling] hasn't made up a magic world which is simply a great wishlist, a Disney-esque fantasy, 'well if you have a dream it's going to come true,' because Harry Potter doesn't present a world like that. It's connected, and comes out of the whole fabric of English folkloric mythology. And I'm not in any way trying to push her into a high literary genre that she herself I'm sure wouldn't claim to belong to. It's merely that that's why it works, because things don't work if they are a result of feeble-minded fantasy. She's a tough writer; she won't compromise on what she sees as being right just in order to worry about what might frighten children. I think it's a function of literature to give children nightmares, just as it's a function of, you know, the biological world to give them measles. If they don't get their nightmares when they're twelve, if they don't wrestle with the dread of the unknown, then when it comes later in life that's when you're really in for trouble, just as mumps at thirty is a much bigger deal than mumps at eight. So you're kind of [laughs] doing the children a favor.

Frederick Delius:
[introducing the eccentric stranger to Fenby] That's Percy Grainger. Sometimes, he composes.

Professor Parkins:
There are more things in philosophy than are dreamt of in heaven and earth.