Quotes by Writers - Page 24

I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography.

In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.

In actual fact our Russian experience—when I use the word "Russian" I always differentiate it from the word "Soviet"—I have in mind even pre-Soviet, pre-revolutinoary experience—in actual fact it is vitally important for the West, because by some chance of history we have trodden the same path seventy or eighty years before the West. And now it is with a strange sensation that we look at what is happening to you; many social phenomena that happened in Russia before its collapse are being repeated. Our experience of life is of vital importance to the West, but I am not convinced that you are capable of assimilating it without having gone through it to the end yourselves.You know, one could quote here many examples: for one, a certain retreat by the older generation, yielding their intellectual leadership to the younger generation. It is against the natural order of things for those who are youngest, with the least experience of life, to have the greatest influence in directing the life of society. One can say then that this is what forms the spirit of the age, the current of public opinion, when people in authority, well known professors and scientists, are reluctant to enter into an argument even when they hold a different opinion. It is considered embarrassing to put forward one's counterarguments, lest one become involved. And so there is a certain abdication of responsibility, which is typical here where there is complete freedom....There is now a universal adulation of revolutionaries, the more so the more extreme they are! Similarly, before the revolution, we had in Russia, if not a cult of terror, then a fierce defense of terrorists. People in good positions—intellectuals, professors, liberals—spent a great deal of effort, anger, and indignation in defending terrorists.

In reality, every reality is a veil over reality.

I asked this heroic pet lover how it felt to have died for a schnauzer named Teddy. Salvador Biagiani was philosophical. He said it sure beat dying for absolutely nothing in the Viet Nam War.

New Rome will be destroyedBy the attacks of new vandals.God always remains silent.

Most human beings have an absolute and infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

It’s not that. It’s just… never mind. Water under the bridge.” I stand up and head for my room. Two against one. No man ever won this war. It’s why we fight them against other men. At least there is a chance at victory.

Everyone seems inspired by some religion that promises fulfillment. Within the clashing words we are all expressing the same impulses. We are divided over methods which are the fruit of our reasoning, but not over our goals, which are identical.

No zek had the right to stay one second in his workroom without the supervision of a free employee because prudence dictated that the prisoner would be bound to use that unsupervised second to break into the steel safe with a lead pencil, photograph its secret documents with a trouser button, explode an atom bomb, and fly to the moon.

When you want to be well-liked in the world, you have to let a lot of people teach you things that you know and they don't.

Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day - very much such a sweetness as this - I struck my first whale - a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty - forty - forty years ago! - ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without - oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command! - when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before - and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare - fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soul - when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts - away, whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow - wife? wife? - rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey - more a demon than a man! - aye, aye! what a forty years' fool - fool - old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God! - crack my heart! - stave my brain! - mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on board! - lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see in that eye!

It so happens that the world is undergoing a transformation to which no change that has yet occurred can be compared either in scope or in rapidity.

Her laughter sounded like April showers, like whispered secrets, like glass wind-chimes.

They intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are.

It is a lonely thing, remembering for someone else.

With Pollution, emotion is irrelevant, it is not their nature,” Mearth sighed, making a face as if she were talking to an ignorant small child. “I didn’t create them, humans created the Pollution. Cheryl Nobel, Alecto Steele, Albert Sanders, Olivia Campbell, all my pretty little Representations, there aren’t many of them left these days but they’re still very dangerous! They’re here to tell society all about its mistakes! You don’t understand the world of Representations.

When you don't have a job (requiring reading) and you are doing your own reading you've got deep psychological questions. As deep as those of a little boy.

I was nothing but a failure. A fucked-up, broken shame.I was nothing but this emptiness. A shell ruined by fame.Don’t be afraid to shatter, baby, if that will set you free.I’ll find you in the pieces and that will unbreak me.

A feeble body makes a feeble mind. I do not know what doctors cure us of, but I know this: they infect us with very deadly diseases, cowardice, timidity, credulity, the fear of death. What matter if they make the dead walk, we have no need of corpses; they fail to give us men, and it is men we need.

The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.

… What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary -property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life -don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart -and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory.

I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with

The Complete Work is essentially dramatic, thought it takes different forms - prose passages in this first volume, poems and philosophies in other volumes. It's the product of the temperament I've been blessed or cursed with - I'm not sure which. All I know is that the author of these lines (I'm not sure if also of these books) has never had just one personality, and has never thought or felt except dramatically - that is, through invented persons, or personalities, who are more capable than he of feeling what's to be felt.

It is not our right to punish one for thinking as he does, no matter how much we disagree.

Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.

Respectability is the dickey on the bosom of civilization.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.

If you're going to lead people, you've got to have somewhere to go.

And the further they go, the more they'll remember, they can take it from me.

When Gregory says, ‘Are they guilty?’ he means, ‘Did they do it?’ But when he says, ‘Are they guilty?’ he means, ‘Did the court find them so?’ The lawyer’s world is entire unto itself, the human pared away.

Men are all the same, they think that because they came out of the belly of a woman they know all there is to know about women.

Get rich. Live life to the fullest. Destroy the world.

A good traveler is one who who does not know where he is going to , and a perfect traveler does not know where he came from.

Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.

Violence does not necessarily take people by the throat and strangle them. Usually it demands no more than an ultimate allegiance from its subjects. They are required merely to become accomplices in its lies.

Hey Shelly, you’re looking at me like I’m from another planet. What’s wrong?”“Nothing’s wrong. Bubbles sold me alien abduction insurance. I haven’t got a care in the world.

It's me being me making you be you...

[T]he category of 'consumer' is now a temporary behavior rather than a permanent identity.

I have no culture, no humane harmony in my brains. I can't live without a culture anymore.

One can be a Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim; it may have, somewhat value. However, if one fails, to be a human, all other qualities, become unimportant and collapse since all the religions execute humanity and love first for respect and empathy each other.

You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.

whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

God in his unending greatness and glory and man in his unending littleness, prepared for the worst but rarely for the best, prepared for the possible but rarely for the impossible.

If you're angry at a loved one, hug that person. And mean it. You may not want to hug - which is all the more reason to do so. It's hard to stay angry when someone shows they love you, and that's precisely what happens when we hug each other.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Having a kid is like an industrial revolution of the emotions. Suddenly you can mass produce worry, and guilt.

The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life.

Henry KissingerHow I'm missing yerYou're the Doctor of my dreamsWith your crinkly hair and your glassy stareAnd your Machiavellian schemesI know they say that you are very vainAnd short and fat and pushyBut at least you're not insaneHenry KissingerHow I'm missing yerAnd wishing you were hereHenry KissingerHow I'm missing yerYou're so chubby and so neatWith your funny clothes and your squishy noseYou're like a German parakeetAll right so people say that you don't careBut you've got nicer legs than HitlerAnd bigger tits than CherHenry KissingerHow I'm missing yerAnd wishing you were here

I became a so-called science fiction writer when someone decreed that I was a science fiction writer. I did not want to be classified as one, so I wondered in what way I'd offended that I would not get credit for being a serious writer. I decided that it was because I wrote about technology, and most fine American writers know nothing about technology. I got classified as a science fiction writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady, New York. My first book, Player Piano, was about Schenectady. There are huge factories in Schenectady and nothing else. I and my associates were engineers, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians. And when I wrote about the General Electric Company and Schenectady, it seemed a fantasy of the future to critics who had never seen the place.

We angels are misconceived in the human world. People perceive us as kindly and bountiful; when, in truth, we are about as fluffy, as gentle, as yielding, as rattlesnakes.

I can't imagine a life without a story.

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.

I lean back and tilt my head so all I see are the clouds in the sky. I'm looking back inside my head with my eyes wide open. I still don't know where I'm going; I decided I'm not crazy or alien. It's just that I'm more like one of those kids they find in remote jungles or forests []. A wolf child. And they've dragged me into this fucking schizo-culture, snarling and spitting and walking around on curled knuckles.

My imaginary pal up there, Mr. NOT, tells me it's my dog-damn ism to kick your illusory he-man's ass. Now, what do you say to that?

You do not see deviantly gendered people walking around with Nalgene bottles, getting our sixty-four recommended ounces as we go through our days. I am sure that somewhere there is an argument to be made that the trans community as a whole is a little cranky because we could all use a nice big glass of water.

He left the name at which the world grew pale To point a moral or adorn a tale.

As for national greatness: It is probably true that all nations are great and even holy at the time of death. The Biafrans had never fought before. They fought well this time. They will never fight again. They will never play Finlandia on an ancient marimba again. Peace.

Love, he told himself, was open to interpretation like any other abstract indulgence but followed the same principles everywhere, irrespective of everything else. One, either won or lost in love, there was no bridge in between, and he decided he had lost, lost to himself, if not to her.