6 Quotes & Sayings By Hakim Bey

Hakim Bey is a writer, spoken-word artist, and academic. He has published two award-winning novels, The Last Word, and The Empire of Necessity. His essays have appeared in various literary journals, including New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the Paris Review, The New York Times Book Review, The Believer, and Grand Street. He is also the author of two volumes of poetry—"The Book of Names" and "The Book of Peace"—and a book on film criticism entitled "Transformers: A Visual Guide to the Cinema." He lives in Brooklyn with his wife.

1
Provided we can escape from the museums we carry around inside us, provided we can stop selling ourselves tickets to the galleries in our own skulls, we can begin to contemplate an art which re-creates the goal of the sorcerer: changing the structure of reality by the manipulation of living symbols ... Art tells gorgeous lies that come true. Hakim Bey
2
Words belong to those who use them only till someone else steals them back. Hakim Bey
3
The sage does not become trapped in semantics, does not mistake map for territory, but rather "opens things up to the light of Heaven" by flowing with the words, by playing with the words. Once attuned to this flow, the sage need make no special effort to "illumine, " for language does it by itself, spontaneously. Language spills over. Hakim Bey
4
I was beginning to feel that there would never be another American uprising, that the energy was gone, and I have some reasons to think that might be true. I like to point out that the crime rate in America has been declining for a long time, and in my opinion it’s because Americans don’t even have enough gumption to commit crimes anymore: the creative aspect of crime has fallen into decay. As for the uprising that takes a principled stand against violence, hats off to them, I admire the idealism, but I don’t think it’s going to accomplish much. Hakim Bey
5
Don't just survive while waiting for someone's revolution to clear your head. Hakim Bey