Oleg > Oleg's Quotes

“Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Such labor follows in the steps of Freud, who has become the Ptolemy of psychology, for now, with him, anyone can explain human phenomena, raising epicycles upon epicycles...”
― Stanisław Lem

“A writer should not run around with a mirror for his countrymen; he should tell his society and his times things no one ever thought before.”
― Stanisław Lem

“There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. He smiled and turned the fancy in his mind. There was a thought. What did time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box lids, and rain. And, going further, what did Time look like? Time look like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theater, 100 billion faces falling like those New Year balloons, down and down into nothing. That was how Time smelled and looked and sounded. And tonight-Tomas shoved a hand into the wind outside the truck-tonight you could almost taste time.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

“Why is it," he said, one time, at the subway entrance, "I feel I've known you so many years?"
"Because I like you," she said, "and I don't want anything from you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.”
― Ray Bradbury

“​​I thought that some of the metaphysical imagery was really particularly effective. Interesting rhythmic devices too, which seemed to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor of the humanity of the author's compassionate soul, which contrives through the medium of the prose structure to sublimate this, transcend that, and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other, and one is left with a profound and vivid insight into whatever it was the book was about.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Do you ever wonder if--well, if there are people living on the third planet?'
'The third planet is incapable of supporting life,' stated the husband patiently. 'Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

“Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Let's set the existence-of-God issue aside for a later volume, and just stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either by spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves, or by more direct means which hardly need to be belabored. Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the universe forever, but a few found some way to survive and to propagate.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“Kindness. The only possible method when dealing with a living creature. You'll get nowhere with an animal if you use terror, no matter what its level of development may be. That I have maintained, do maintain and always will maintain. People who think you can use terror are quite wrong. No, no, terror is useless, whatever its colour – white, red or even brown! Terror completely paralyses the nervous system.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, Heart of a Dog

“Everything passes away - suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the Earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The White Guard

“Once upon a time there was a lady. She had no children, and no happiness either. And at first she cried for a long time, but then she became wicked...”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“General Apollon Diaz was currently in power and leaned toward the position of the hawks, which was to meet force with force. The proposal had already been made at Parliament (which stood in permanent emergency session) to counterattack: to pull twice the number of teeth from the political prisoners the abductors were demanding and mail them poste restante, as the address of guerrilla headquarters was unknown.”
― Stanisław Lem

“It was the face of spring, it was the face of summer, it was the warmness of clover breath. Pomegranate glowed in her lips, and the noon sky in her eyes. To touch her face was that always new experience of opening your window one December morning, early, and putting out your hand to the first white cool powdering of snow that had come, silently, with no announcement, in the night. And all of this, this breath-warmness and plum-tenderness was held forever in one miracle of photographic is chemistry which no clock winds could blow upon to change one hour or one second; this fine first cool white snow would never melt, but live a thousand summers.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“The skill of making, and maintaining Common-wealths, consisteth in certain Rules, as doth Arithmetique and Geometry; not (as Tennis-play) on Practise onely: which Rules, neither poor men have the leisure, nor men that have had the leisure, have hitherto had the curiosity, or the method to find out.”
― Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

“Ubik ... Safe when taken as directed.”
― Philip K. Dick, Ubik

“Hey,” he said, changing the subject. “Let me tell you what’s happened, what made me come here and bother you. S. Dole Melipone has dropped out of sight.”
A moment of silence, and then Ella laughed. “Who or what is an S. Dole Melipone? There can’t be any such thing.”
...
“Maybe you’ve forgotten,” he said.
Ella said, “I haven’t forgotten; I wouldn’t forget an S. Dole Melipone. Is it like a hobbit?”
“It’s Raymond Hollis’ top telepath.”
― Philip K. Dick, Ubik

“Perhaps your definition of your self-system lacks authentic boundaries. You've erected a precarious structure of personality on unconscious factors over which you have no control. That's why you feel threatened by me.”
― Philip K. Dick, Ubik

“My father told me what it used to feel like, waiting in the dentist's office. Every time the nurse opened the door you thought, It's happening. The thing I've been afraid of all my life.”
― Philip K. Dick, Ubik

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“I think the sun is a flower,
That blooms for just one hour.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories

“заграница — это миф о загробной жизни. Кто туда попадает, тот не возвращается.”
― Ilya Ilf, Золотой теленок

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy