2001 A Space Odyssey Quotes

“Hell will be the perpetual duty of conviviality and communication: endlessly greeting people who recognize you and whom you don't recognize. The hell of the signs you no longer decipher and which you are forced to manipulate as in a dream. The hell of the ghostly ideas that signal to you from a very great distance and which you are no longer able to formulate. The hell of the words, names and faces you can't recall.

Impossible to imagine dying anywhere else than in the silence of the desert. Of all things, not to pass away amid sound and fury. To recover the only freedom, which is that of space and emptiness.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004

“The novel you are about to read has sometimes been criticized for explaining too much, and thus destroying some of the movie's mystery. (Rock Hudson stormed out of the premiere complaining "Can someone tell me what the hell this is all about?") But I am quite unrepentant: the printed text has to give much more detail than can be shown on the screen. And I have compounded the felony by writing 2010 (also made into an excellent movie by Peter Hyams), 2061 and 3001.
No trilogy should have more than four volumes, so I promise that 3001 is indeed the Final Odyssey!”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“One Lying Jeep by Stewart Stafford

Pavlov's dogs got hold of,
Occam's Razor and shaved,
Archimedes in the bath while,
Pureeing Newton's apple core.

Ecstasy = McDonald's Squared,
Leaning Tower of Pizza Experiment,
A swirl of Higgs Boson minestrone,
Quaffed blind with Halley's Vomit.

Ignore a Big Bang in your black hole,
Red Giant piggybacking a White Dwarf,
Massive obelisk stuck in the Stargate,
Happy Doomsday to you - lights out.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Cosmic Voyager by Stewart Stafford

I was the new Ulysses,
Petals on a tide of darkness,
Cast to bloom among the stars,
Wilted, off the world's edge.

Lieutenant General Tommy P.,
Name, rank and serial oblivion,
My wife and hurricanes called me,
Memories of love kept me going.

I found myself fading adrift,
Dying far beyond the reach,
Of human hands and hearts,
In withering away, I found all.

They threw flags of all nations,
To reel in a drowning person;
One last breath for man,
One lungful of air for Mankind.

Falling from a height too high,
Never landing when I should,
Tumbling endlessly beyond nausea,
To an ethereally crowded firmament.

As water swirls down a plughole,
I touched the edges of existence,
And found the meaning of life,
In silent rocks of an alien planet.

In the speckled starling womb profound,
Self-love filled the void around.

© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford