Asherisms: For Asher, maxims are a way of storing his voluminous thinking on any given subject via easy-access file labels in the soul. He's been writing them since 1992, when he read Kahlil Gibran's aphorisms in Sand and Foam, and he was spurred on a bit by Oscar Wilde. Some of his maxims are personal, and some are about the world, life, the universe, writing, love, pain, monsters, and nearly anything else he encounters. Some are things that go into making characters and stories and should be considered merely speculative and not taken too seriously.
Asher’s 702nd Maxim
The problem with evolution is evolutionists; they share too many cultural assumptions with their opponents.
Asher’s 701st Maxim
I’d rather a thoughtful creationist than a knee-jerk evolutionist.
Asher’s 700th Maxim
Every criticism one can level against the average person is summed up by shitty music.
Asher’s 699th Maxim
Contradictions are not a sin; they’re evidence of experimentation.
Asher’s 698th Maxim
I’m not a workaholic; I merely over-deliver.
Asher’s 697th Maxim
If it weren’t for intellectual dishonesty, some people would have no intellect at all.
Asher’s 696th Maxim
Those who do well on standardized tests are more likely to follow directions because, in order to do well on standardized tests, you have to follow directions.
Asher’s 695th Maxim
I don’t imply things; I say them.
Asher’s 694th Maxim
I’ve no animosity toward any gender, race, class, or sexual orientation, but I find all caricatures offensively tedious.
Asher’s 693rd Maxim
The belief that everyone deserves an opinion on everything destroys the prerequisite distinction between matters of opinion and questions of fact.
Asher’s 692nd Maxim
For most men, God is the terror of the ego engulfed in endless wishing after an artificial world.
Asher’s 691st Maxim
A man who tells his girlfriend everything IS the girlfriend.
Asher’s 690th Maxim
Intrinsic to the ape, notably the human ape, is the capacity to rebel; it is an essential adaptation to a fallen cosmos.
Asher’s 689th Maxim
I hack everything I wear; if you can’t find the ‘screw you’ to convention in it, it just means my work for the day is subtle.
Asher’s 688th Maxim
The most important distinction between man and boy is that man has settled on the things about himself that don’t change and is committed to those with the confidence of hard-won self-knowledge.
Asher’s 687th Maxim
People with no regrets have either lived too little or are too morally insensitive to know what to regret.
Asher’s 686th Maxim
When the world is the object of focus, things are always as bad as they seem.
Asher’s 685th Maxim
The extortion of our industry, stripping of our liberties, and despoiling of our neighbors, are each predicated on the collusive evangelism of those who say it’s not nearly as bad as it seems.
Asher’s 684th Maxim
I’m not intentionally larger than myself. I think I just actually am the larger self.
Asher’s 683rd Maxim
Being a writer is the opposite of being passionate for words; a writer murders and eviscerates his drafts, casting phrases into oblivion regardless of their beauty.
Asher’s 682nd Maxim
Honing our survival skills conditions us to live in the worst possible circumstances; we need to hone the skills it takes to thrive.
Asher’s 681st Maxim
The acquisition of civilization makes me both a traditional conservative and traditional liberal, rather than the left or right wing product of a post-civilized milieu.
Asher’s 680th Maxim
Pages are bricks, and a manuscript is built one brick at a time.
Asher’s 679th Maxim
Current events are an essential fuel for fiction.