Thomas M. Disch > Quotes

“Genius is an infinite capacity for pain.”
― Thomas M. Disch, Camp Concentration

“Laughter is just a slowed down scream of terror.”
― Thomas Disch

“It considered trying to explain their error to them, but what would be the use? They would only go away with hurt feelings. You can't always expect people, or squirrels, to be rational.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Brave Little Toaster

“All children... feel a demonic sympathy with those things that cause disorder in the grown-up world.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Genocides

“The forest stretched on seemingly forever with the most monotonous predictability, each tree just like the next - trunk, branches, leaves; trunk, branches, leaves. Of course a tree would have taken a different view of the matter. We all tend to see the way others are alike and how we differ, and it's probably just as well we do, since that prevents a great deal of confusion. But perhaps we should remind ourselves from time to time that ours is a very partial view, and that the world is full of a great deal more variety than we ever manage to take in.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Brave Little Toaster

“Though opposition is a hopeless task, acquiescence would be worse.”
― Thomas M. Disch, Camp Concentration

“Here was a flower (the daisy reflected) strangely like itself and yet utterly unlike itself too. Such a paradox has often been the basis for the most impassioned love.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Brave Little Toaster

“What to Accept


The fact of mountains. The actuality
Of any stone — by kicking, if necessary.
The need to ignore stupid people,
While restraining one's natural impulse
To murder them. The change from your dollar,
Be it no more than a penny,
For without a pretense of universal penury
There can be no honor between rich and poor.
Love, unconditionally, or until proven false.
The inevitability of cancer and/or
Heart disease. The dialogue as written,
Once you've taken the role. Failure,
Gracefully. Any hospitality
You're willing to return. The air
Each city offers you to breathe.
The latest hit. Assistance.
All accidents. The end.”
― Thomas M. Disch, Yes, Let's: New and Selected Poems

“Knowledge is devalued when it becomes too generally known”
― Thomas M. Disch, Camp Concentration

“The end of the world. Let me tell you about the end of the world. It happened fifty years ago. Maybe a hundred. And since then it's been lovely. I mean it. Nobody tries to bother you. You can relax. You know what? I like the end of the world.”
― Thomas M. Disch, 334

“Much that is terrible we do not know. Much that is beautiful we shall still discover. Let's sail till we come to the edge.”
― Thomas Disch

“But before any of the small appliances who may be listening to this tale should begin to think that they might do the same thing, let them be warned: ELECTRICITY IS VERY DANGEROUS. Never play with old batteries! Never put your plug in a strange socket! And if you are in any doubt about the voltage of the current where you are living, ask a major appliance.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Brave Little Toaster

“For a lot of people, poetry tends to be dull. It's not read much. It takes a special kind of training and a lot of practice to read poetry with pleasure. It's like learning to like asparagus.”
― Thomas M. Disch

“The toaster (lacking real bread) would pretend to make two crispy slices of toast. Or, if the day seemed special in some way, it would toast an imaginary English muffin.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Brave Little Toaster

“In short, Daniel was once again a member of a family. Viewed from without they were a strange enough family: a rattling, hunchbacked old woman, a spoiled senile cocker spaniel, and a eunuch with a punctured career (for though Rey didn’t live with them, his off-stage presence was as abiding and palpable as that of any paterfamilias away every day at the office). And Daniel himself. But better to be strange together than strange apart. He was glad to have found such a haven at last, and he hoped that most familial and doomed of hopes, that nothing would change. ”
― Thomas M. Disch, On Wings of Song

“This is my journal. I can be candid here. Candidly, I could not be more miserable.”
― Thomas M. Disch, Camp Concentration

“The problem is that we've got a sense of humor and (Republicans have) got guns. Will we die laughing?”
― Thomas M. Disch

“But the toaster was quite satisfied with itself, thank you. Though it knew from magazines that there were toasters who could toast four slices at a time, it didn't think that the master, who lived alone and seemed to have few friends, would have wanted a toaster of such institutional proportions. With toast, it's quality that matters, not quantity.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Brave Little Toaster

“Sometimes the whole world is mud luscious and puddle wonderful”
― Thomas M. Disch

“Gender and the complications it gives rise to simply aren't relevant to the lives appliances lead.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Brave Little Toaster

“In any case, muffins that are only imaginary aren't liable to get stuck.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Brave Little Toaster

“Poets are regarded as handicapped writers whose work must be treated with a tender condescension, such as one accords the athletic achievements of basketball players confined to wheelchairs.”
― Thomas M. Disch

“So, without saying anything to the others, it made its way to the farthest corner of the meadow and began to toast an imaginary muffin. That was always the best way to unwind when things got to be too much for it.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Brave Little Toaster

“(Shoddiness is) the nature of human life. It takes an exertion to be indifferent to these things, but it's an exertion worth making. Also, it allows you luxuries like scorn and flippancy.”
― Thomas M. Disch

“When one is experiencing failure, it is hard to resist the comfort of paranoia.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Man Who Had No Idea

“But there you put your finger on what it is that separates the sheep from the goats, and vice versa: imagination. Those who possess it have an afterlife; those who don't possess it, or in whom it has greatly atrophied, are reborn as plants or animals. It's as simple, and unfair, as that. You could almost say that heaven is no more than a fantasm generated by the excess energies of the pooled imaginations of the blessed.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Businessman

“Jesus loved crème brûlée, but even with crème brûlée enough isn't just enough, it can get to be too much.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Word of God: Or, Holy Writ Rewritten

“Hell is not merely preferable to heaven-it's the only clear notion of an afterlife-of a goal worth striving toward-that human imagination has been able to devise.”
― Thomas M. Disch, Camp Concentration

“He thought proudly that many people in his position could not have adjusted, would have gone mad.

Of course, he was descending.…

But he was still sane. He had chosen his course and now he was following it.”
― Thomas M. Disch, Descending

“Sanity, however, was so integral to his character that neither hysteria nor horror could long have their way with him.”
― Thomas M. Disch, Descending