"The competition to... continually transcend limits when you discover them was an unending strain on the imagination-fueled by drugs. A lot of speed, a lot of acid, a lot of smack."

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More quotes from: Peter Coyote

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• "After we left the Mime Troupe, we were rolling stones, just out there. "
• "Am I sounding incredibly pompous? "
• "Any political agenda and organization which doesn't begin with personal responsibility is just half the ..."
• "Any structure is mutable, but once you've chosen it, then you have to accept it-if ..."
• "Around 1975, I was working for the governor of California, running public policy in the ..."
• "At a certain point the idea of autonomy leads you to accept responsibility for those ..."
• "Basically, in an autonomous system, you're on your own. "
• "Business is a subset of the environment, not the other way around. You can't have ..."
• "Compared to traditional theater, the Mime Troupe was very, very free and very, very lucid ..."
• "Death is inevitable. It struck me as a maimed and lame existence to do anything ..."
• "Even over the environment, are nuclear issues. That's the mega threat to all living systems. ..."
• "Every once in a while wars sweep through, and savagery and other things. Rwanda as ..."
• "Everyone acknowledged that we were the products of bourgeois culture. There was a lot of ..."
• "Everyone knows that our current system is kind of like legalized prostitution. The corporate sector ..."
• "I always thought that the Mime Troupe was the most zany and the most anarchic ..."
• "I attracted enough attention starting at 40, which is already beyond the demographic curve, and ..."
• "I didn't want to die-and I was going to die. And furthermore, I didn't want ..."
• "I directed the first road tour of The Minstrel Show. This show began with black-faced ..."
• "I don't remember too many ideological discussions. I think people really stayed away from that. "
• "I fell completely in love with Kay Hayward and Sandy Archer, two of the most ..."
• "I got out of college and I went to get my master's in creative writing ..."
• "I had these two coyote puppies on the porch of my place, and I was ..."
• "I have one extremely able and overworked assistant who helps me. It's a busy life. "
• "I have two children. One is a doctoral candidate, one is 13. "
• "I might well have died. At that time in my life I was very indulgent; ..."
• "I no longer see anything as free. And free means not interdependent. I look at ..."
• "I sat in rooms and listened to people oppressing everyone in the room in the ..."
• "I see great continuity in young people today, in people trying to make a difference, ..."
• "I think it's good that people value their bodies and take care of them. I ..."
• "I think media pushes it right up to our eyeballs and our eardrums, and makes ..."
• "I think that people who treat their body well are far more amenable to arguments ..."
• "I think the '60s were an extraordinary time. I feel bad for the kids today ..."
• "I think the most critical thing, because it is the biological common denominator for all ..."
• "I was an actor then and I'm an actor now. But from a very rigid ..."
• "I was bedridden for fifteen weeks with my second case of serum hepatitis. And I ..."
• "I was given as much authority as I could take at the Mime Troupe. In ..."
• "I would say 90 percent of my mail and phone calls are from people who ..."
• "I'm actually regarded as a movie star in Europe and treated with a lot of ..."

• "I'm not a fraternity boy... I'm happy to be right here, right now. I'm really ..."
• "I'm not a person who feels like I've yet lived the high point of my ..."
• "I'm not trying to recapitulate the institutions of the '60s, but the intentions of the ..."
• "I've lived with Hell's Angels and Black Panthers and all sorts of different people: some ..."
• "I've often thought that if I hadn't gone through the Diggers, if I'd gone directly ..."
• "If I believed in limits, there's an absolute limit. The only way I was going ..."
• "If there are no limits, you're like a water strider skimming over the surface of ..."
• "If we didn't have radio and television and newspapers, life for most people would be ..."
• "If you look deeply at that chair, you can see the sunlight in it, you ..."
• "If you really believe in the interdependence of the universe, you are the problem. The ..."
• "In a communal house it was no fun to live anywhere with an angry woman. "
• "In a world of surpluses, you need new inducements, other than stuff to get people ..."
• "In the '60s you used to think that the style was important, because the style ..."
• "In the Haight, around 1968, you walk down the street, you've got a coffin. People ..."
• "Interdependence is a fact, it's not an opinion. "
• "It came home to me indelibly that I was never going to change anything in ..."
• "It was in the Mime Troupe that I first really got introduced to a comprehensive ..."
• "It's just been a practice, addressing the angelic in people. They like to have that ..."
• "Kennedy invited us into the White House-the first time in the history of the White ..."
• "Money is a way of creating scarcity. "
• "Nothing that I care about politically will come to pass without campaign finance reform. Until ..."
• "Once you accept anything as tacked down, then you begin to build a structure, to ..."
• "Once you've experienced something with the totality of your being, you can't go back. "
• "One of the things that occurs to me is that we are, now in the ..."
• "Part of my time is dedicated to reading scripts, part to voice-overs, part to travel, ..."
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• "People like us were not going to be any more comfortable in a leftist nation-state ..."
• "Reaganism is just a kind of atavism, just a throwback. I think we pushed too ..."
• "The '60s was a wonderful moral re-awakening for America. And if you look at the ..."
• "The body is an inviolable limit. And you have to really hurt it before you ..."
• "The city was taking an authoritarian police view of the whole matter. We started feeding ..."
• "The editor of this literary magazine, Zyzzyva, asked me to write something a number of ..."
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• "The guy who accused me of being a bad revolutionary clawed his eyes out on ..."
• "The guys held down a lot of the visionary, metaphysical end of things. You know, ..."
• "The guys worked hard too, don't get me wrong. The women took care of the ..."
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• "The media was insatiable for news and consequently vulnerable to manipulation-as every president has discovered ..."

• "The media was publishing all these articles about the Haight, seducing and attracting young people ..."
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• "The newspaper makes great hay over the Jerry Rubins who sell stock. But you know, ..."
• "The responsibility to the universe is exactly the responsibility to yourself. They're not one and ..."
• "The San Francisco Mime Troupe was renting a theater from us. The lobby was full ..."
• "The self is just not a worthy enough vehicle to worship. "
• "The women made a role for the men. There were inklings of a model for ..."
• "There was a certain amount of ramma-lammah that we would do for other people, certain ..."
• "There was a degree to which we were hard guys. We were the only hippie ..."
• "There was this loose linked sense of family and sharing of resources and alliances. You'd ..."
• "There were months where I was sort of asleep on my feet. "
• "There were real prices to pay, and sometimes the body, sometimes your life itself, was ..."
• "There's a line: a little water is good for you, too much is not good ..."
• "There's machinery that can create a television set for every man and woman and child ..."
• "Thirty people might live in a house that one welfare check paid for-but still it ..."
• "To be engaged means to follow issues that impact your life. "
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• "We adhered to a one-sided vision. We excluded people who didn't see it our way. ..."
• "We created a lot of controversy at school, a little quiet midwestern college, Grinell College ..."
• "We didn't think of ourselves as impoverished. "
• "We have lost a lot of ground against the unrestrained forces of multinational capital, against ..."
• "We left 3,000 or 4,000 tons of depleted uranium weaponry in Iran and Afghanistan, turning ..."
• "We were accused of being pretty chauvinistic by some, but I'm not the guy that ..."
• "We were arrested in many places and we had a lot of adventures. "
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• "We were sensitive to the growing ecological crisis and the fact that a culture that ..."
• "We were the first Easterners who'd come in with long hair and John Coltrane and ..."
• "We've lost ground by having the '60s misdefined by pundits like George Will and Bennett ..."
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• "When Alioto was elected mayor, the game changed. Suddenly there was a lot of heavy ..."
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• "You don't see artists sitting around a lot, talking about ideology. They find out what ..."
• "You don't stick needles in your arms for 12 years if everything's OK on the ..."
• "You had to be anonymous. If you received recompense for what you were doing, fame, ..."