It's so important what you're doing in your life. It's tremendously important to the work, and no aesthetic theories take that into account.
John MausThere's really not much in life that's as violent or traumatic as an encounter with somebody who really surprises you and opens up that strange dynamic that's involved in romantic love.
John MausIt's a very teenage idea - this idea that thought is ruined when we give over to television shows and glossy magazines and what they are telling us to do. The alternative, I believe, in is pitiless censorship. Because we owe each other the best effort we can to see one another without that mediation.
John MausI'm against eating a human being alive - I don't do it. Somebody might make cannibalism jokes and laugh it off like it's nothing. I don't agree with that. I want to proclaim a rejection of cannibalism.
John MausThere's love and there's romantic love. The Greeks had different words for different kinds of love. And we just got "love." I don't know what you would call the other kinds - maybe brotherly love, Christian love, the love of Saint Francis, love of everyone and everything. Then there's romantic love, which, by and large, is a pain in the ass, a kind of trauma.
John Maus