Quotes
Mis-quotes
And
Deliberate Confabulations
from
Richard S Shaver



Cherry-Picked by Ye Editor
(Most of Shaver's typos included...)

On his middle name - Sharpe:

Truth is, I never had a middle name, and somehow when my first story appeared somebody put Richard S Shaver...a typo I guess and I have had this middle name initial every since with no way to explain t myself what it was for or how ti got there...it is richard s shaver...so when they asked I said Sharp Shaver...and that stuck. It is rememerable more so than just shaver..sharp Shaver but then they used so many pan names like...never mind...I even sold a story under the name Richard English before I found out Richard English was a better writer so I quit using that before he sued me.

I used to know a fellow whose name was Peters and they always called him Wash...short for washington I guess. And one time he was in the barber shop and along came a friend of his and stuck his head in the door and asked the barber "'S Wash Peters in here?" and the barber answered "Now lookhere. I only give shampoos and do hair cuts and shaves and thatsall!"

So you see sexual freedom and such is only a recent thing in barber shops where they have femalemanicurists doing things like that.

...and then ma changed dad's mind to Sharp, a family name...she didn't want it known about Sharps rifles so spelled it Sharpe.

On Ray Palmer:

Like Palmer never wears anything much but overalls...but there's a reason...he has to have his suits made special as he is all legs and no middle. He looks like a spider in a swim suit. A long legged spider...

On Abstract Art:

I was just studying some thunder eggs on the desk here, and when I got up I passed some Picassos in an old TIME (magazine) tear of Piccasso prints in small size and as the light struck them on a slant giving not a picture but a black and white outline ..i was struck by the fact that Picasso abstracts are precisely the same sort of pattern one finds in magnifying thunder eggs ..the little jig saws that look like miniaturization bread-board hook ups... painted transistor circuits... and I wondered if you had noticed this about abstract art..it is so often the same thing as a print of rock photo ... do you like spaghetti? i'll take a side dish of Picasso

The Nude Descending the Staircase is precisely like so many rock prints . . . like somebody ran a diamond saw through her

I always thought Picasso had mind-radio robot and his paintings bear me out in this..they have to be the same sort of nut behind them.

All our artists have sabotaged minds ..and the best are the worst thisaway -thatawayand the best are the worst thisaway thataway

I feel a draft between the ears myself

On Pessimism:

Pessimism is optimism mixed with factual truth. And dis-illusion is the illusion used by disintegrant eneergies like atomic holocausts give off...have you been dis-illusioned lately? Get away from me, you are contaminated by factual thought

On Time:

Oyes...since it is observably now all the time..now now..forever now...why aint it? the answer...Time is inflationary. Or..Time is fluid, as in brake. Yesterday will be tomorow then. There really is no such thing as time has always been a vast revelation to me and I keep pondering on it...that we invented time as a way of keeping track just as we invented the compass and the points of the compass and there really aren't any...just in our minds...and how MAD people really are in ignoring reality and talking about time as if it had a reality.

On GOD:

Nov schmoz ka pop isnt anything spelled backward...but DOG spelled bakward is a mad concept of everything in one. If you take a dog and spell it backward you have a cup into which you can pour all meaning and all space and infinity and you rub it on your wounds and feel better and you use it for a crutch and pretend you have faith in it and it will keep you from being sane and miserable.

Radar spelled backwards is radar...

On the Bumper Sticker on the Door:

I got a bumper sticker in the mail...it reads "Is There Intelligent Life on Earth?" So I pasted it on my front door and under it a sign..."Knock and We'll see." The knock is so some dummy won't open the door when I am working in the darkroom. but it always makes me laugh...because so seldom does anyone who comes really qualify
it should read "Knock and we'll both see...but I am an egotiz egotistical who never imagines anyone else is

On freedom and pollution:

About "freedom" it has sadly been perishing along with the bird population and from much the same cause...all the little coastal places where people used to live like Eskimos on fish and oysters and crabs etc are now deserted and empty of life

Eco war is coming..worldwide..to enforce ecological necessities on wayward piratical groups..

There will be blown up chimneys and splattered exploded strip mine diggers and chemical plants with more bombs than the Irish ever thunk possible

And it will be soon..or there wont be any human race to wage it




back