quotablebookquotes discussion

Quotes you love? like? hate?

"A half-read book is a half-finished love affair."

"Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively."

"She has to lose her pre-Copernican view of a universe revolving around herself." ~ page 66

"'Hey, metaphysics seminar is on the roof. Just take the elevator up and keep walking until you hit the sidewalk. Anything is true if enough people believe it.'" ~ page 99

"Anonymous, faceless homicides, he decides, lack the thrill of human contact." ~ page 142

"One bright dusk, four, five, no, my God, six summers ago, I strolled along a Greenwich avenue of mature chestnuts and mock oranges in a state of grace. Those Regency residences number amount London's Costliest properties, but should you ever inherit one, dear Reader, sell it, don't live in it. Houses like these secrete some dark sorcery that transforms their owners into fruitcakes. One such victim, an ex-chief of Rhodesian polices, had, on the evening in question, written me a check as rotund as himself to edit and print his autobiography. My state of grace was thanks in part to this check, and in part to a 1983 Chablis from the Duruzoi vineyard, a magic potion that dissolves our myriad tragedies into mere misunderstandings." ~ Page 145

"Odd how the wrong stories pop into one's head at my age." ~ Page 146

"Dermot found me; bad news inexorably does. Let me reiterate, bumping into Pope Pius XIII would have surprised me less. In fact, His Infallibility would have blended in better" ~ Page 147

"Men of your age don't bounce. They splat." ~Page 155

"Essex raised its ugly head. When i was a scholarship boy at the local grammar, son of a city-hall toiler on the make, this country was synonymous with liberty, success, and Cambridge. Now look at it. Shopping malls and housing estates pursue their creeping invasion of our ancient land. A North Sea wind snatched frilly clouds in its teeth and scarpered off to the midlands. The countryside proper began at last. My mother had a cousin out here, her family had a big house. I think they moved to Winnipeg for a better life. There! There, in the shadow of that DIY warehouse, once stood a row of walnut trees where me and Pip Oakes - a childhood chum who died aged thirteen under the wheels of an oil tanker - varnished a canoe one summer and sailed it alone the Say. Sticklebacks in jars,. There, right there, around that bend we lit a fire and cooked beans and potatoes wrapped in silver foil! Come back, oh, come back! Is one glimpse all I get?" ~ Page 161

"But no, we cross, crisscross, and recross our old tracks like figure skaters." ~ Page 163

"How Opulent the building had felt after my own parents' bland box of suburbia - one day, I promise, I'm going to live in a house like this. Another promise I've broken; at least that one was only to myself." ~ Page 163

"Old Father Timothy offers this advice to his younger readers, included for free in the price of this memoir: conduct your life in such a way that, when you train breaks down in the eve of you years, you have a warm dry car drive by a loved one - or a hired one, it matters not - to take you home" ~Page 166

"The Ticket-wallah, whose pimples bubbled as I watched, was as intractably dense as his counterpart in King's Cross. The Corporation breeds them from the same stem cell." ~ Page 168

"Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage." ~ Page 168

"But 'luckily,' the train before mine was so late that it still hadn't departed, All the seats were taken, and I had to squeeze into a three-inch slot. I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. The Diagonal People." ~ Page 168

"Oh, aging is ruddy unbearable! The I's we were yearn to breathe the world's air again, but can they ever break out from these calcified cocoons? Oh, can they hell." ~ Page 168

"Behold your future, Cavendish the Younger. You will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you. Your present will not keep pace with the world's. This slippage will stretch your skin, sag your skeleton, erode your hair and memory, make your skin turn opaque so your twitching organs and blue-cheese veins will be semivisible. You will venture out only in daylight and avoiding weekends and school holidays. Language, too, will leave you behind, betraying your tribal affiliations whenever you speak. On escalators, on trunk roads, in supermarket aisles, the living will overtake you, incessantly. Elegant women will not see you. Store detectives will not see you. Sales people will not see you unless they sell stair lifts or fraudulent insurance policies. Only babies, cats, and drug addicts will acknowledge your existence. So do not fritter your days. Sooner than you fear, you will stand before a mirror in a care home, look at your body and think, E.T., locked in a ruddy cupboard for a fortnight." ~ Page 181

"Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths" ~Page 185

"I envied my uncritical, unthinking sisters." ~ Page 199

"You said you envied your uncritical, unthinking sisters.

That's not quite the same as wishing to be one" ~ Page 199

"I said something about reading not being knowledge, about knowledge without xperience being food without sustenance." ~ Page 224

"These...xistential qualms you suffer, they just mean you're truly human." ~ Page 132

"I Din't finish speakin' my cure 'cos Roses schnockoed my face so hard the ground dived forward an' I crashed my jaxy." ~ Page 256

"Mis'ry'n'barrassment are hungersome for blame" ~ Page 256

"The Icon'ry, Aunt Bees said, held Valleysmen's past an' present all t'gether." ~ Page 258

"I know that don't sound senseful, but yarns 'bout Old-Un Smart an' flyin' dwellin's an' grown' babbits in bottles an' pictures zoomin' cross the Hole World ain't senseful neither but that's how it was, so storymen an' old books tell it." ~ Page 263

"The Ghost-Girl's lips was fixed in a bitter smile, but her creamy eyes was sad so sad but proud'n'strong too." ~ Page 264

"Oh, eerie'n'so beautsome'n'blue she was, my soul was achin'." ~ Page 264

"We din't speak much from then 'cos speakin' can be heard by spyers what you can't spy." ~ Page 270

"So I telled her my 'maginin's o' places from old books'n'pics in the school'ry. Lands where the Fall'd never falled, towns bigger'n all o' Big I. an' towers o' stars'n'suns blazin' higher'n Mauna Kea, bays of not jus' one Prescient Ship but a mil'yun, Smart boxes what make delish grinds more'n anyun can eat, Smart Pipes what gush more brew'n anyun can drink, places where it's always spring an' no sick, no knucklyin' an' no slavin'. Places where ev'ryun's a beautsome purebirth who lives to be one hun'erd'n'fifty years." ~ Page 271

"Times are you say a person's b'liefs ain't true, they think you're sayin' their lifes ain't true an' their thruth ain't true" ~ Page 273

"flamelight danced with shadows round them unloved walls." ~ Page 273

" Then the true true is diff'rent to the seemin' true? said I.

Yay, an' it usually is, I mem'ry Meronym sain', an' that's why true true is presher'n'rarer'n diamonds" ~ Page 274

"See, I thinked, Meronym knows a lot 'bout Smart an' life but Valleysmen know more 'bout death." ~ Page 274

"Old Ma Yibber spread the news that Zachry what came down off Mauna Kea weren't the same Zachry what'd gone up, an' true 'nuff I s'pose, there ain't no journey what don't change you some." ~ Page 282

"So Wise Man summ'ned Crow an' say-soed him these words: Fly across the crazed'n'jiffyin' ocean to the Mighty Volcano, an' on it's foresty slopes, find a long stick. Pick up that stick in your beak an' fl into that Mighty Volcano's mouth an' dip it in the lake o' flames what bubble'n'spit in that fiery place. Then bring the burnin' stick back here to Panama so humans'll mem'ry fire once more an' mem'ry back its makin'." ~Page 284

"I got a six'n'six so maybe my luck was healin', so I thinked, fool o' fate what I am, yay, what we all are." ~ Page 285

"Yay, when it came to faces, pretty lies was better'n scabbin' true" ~ Page 287

"I watched the clouds awobby from the floor o' that kayak. Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say were a cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrorw? Only Sonmi the east an' the west an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o' clouds." ~ Page 308

"Most yarnin's got a bit o' true, some yarnin's got some true, an' a few yarnin's got a lot o' true." ~Page 309

"All rising suns set" ~ Page 326

"Well, you seem to have embraced Union propaganda wholeheartedly, Sonmi-451.

And I might observe that you have embraced corpocracy propaganda wholeheartedly, Archivist." ~Page 326

"Fantasy. Lunacy.

All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilites." ~ Page 326

"Every nowhere is a somewhere" ~ Page 329

"You underestimate humanity's ability to bring such evil into being." ~ Page 344

"Why does any martyr cooperate with his judases?" ~ page 349

"As Seneca warned Nero: No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor." ~ Page 349

"After my modest victory I played patience (the card game, not the virtue, never that)" ~ Page 367

"Sulkers Binge on lonely fantasies." ~ Page 369

"Poor England. Too much history for its acreage. Years grow inwards here, like my toenails." ~ Page 370

"I Succumbed. Late-fifteenth-century verb, Old French succomber or Latin succumbere, but a basic necessity of the human condition, especially mine." ~ Page 372

"Three or four time only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides...I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were fixed features in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the every0constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds." ~ Page 373

"I made it to Boxing Day because I was too miserable to hang myself. I lie. I made it to Boxing Day because I was too cowardly to hang myself." ~Page 373

"A Titus Andronicus catalog of threats beat at the door. They haunt my nightmares still." ~ Page 377

"Middle age is flown, but it is attitude, not years, that condemns one to the ranks of the Undead, or else proffers salvation. In the domain of the young there dwells many an Undead soul. They rush about so, their inner putrefaction is concealed for a few decades, that is all." ~ Page 387

“-Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction--in short, belief--grows ever "truer." The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.
- The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to "landscape" the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.)
- Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up--a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone.
Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows--the actual past--from another such simulacrum--the actual future?
-One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each "shell" (the present) encased inside a nest of "shells" (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of "now"likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.
- Proposition: I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey." ~ Page 392

"Funny, thinks Milton. Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible." ~ Page 396

"Oaks live for six hundred years. Two hundred to grow, two hundred to live, two hundred to die." ~ Page 402

"Once upon a time, I had a baby daughter. I dressed her in frilly frocks, enrolled her for ballet classes, and sent her to horse riding camp five summers in a row. But look at her. She turned into Lester anyway." ~ Page 415

"'Catch you all next time.' Luisa is going. 'It's a small world. it keeps recrossing itself'" ~ Page 418

"Another war is always coming, Robert. They are never properly extinguished. What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions, and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation-state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be. War, Robert, is one of humanity's two eternal companions." ~ Page 444

"The reductio ad absurdum of M.D.'s view, I argued, was that science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity's powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilization drives itself to extinction. M.D. embraced my objection with mordant glee. 'Precisely. Our will to power, our science, and those v. faculties that elevated us from apes, to saves, to modern man, are the same faculties that'll snuff out Homo Sapiens before this century is out! You'll probably live to see it happen, you fortunate son. What a symphonic crescendo that'll be, eh?'" ~ Page 444

"But Eva knows I'm terra ingonita and explores me unhurriedly, like you did. Because she's lean as a boy. Because her scent is almonds, meadow grass. Because if I smile at her ambitions to be an Egyptologist, she kicks my shin under the table. Because she makes me think about something other than myself. Because even when serious she shines. because she prefers travelogues to Sir Walter Scott, prefers Billy Mayerl to Mozart, and couldn't tell C major from a sergeant major. Because I, only I, see her smile a fraction before it reaches her face. Because Emperor Robert is not a good man - his best part is commandeered by his unperformed music - but she gives me that rarest smile anyway. Because we listened to night jars. Because her laughter spurts through a blowhole in the top of her head and sprays all over the morning. Because a man like me has no business with this substance "beauty," yet here she is, in these soundproofed chambers of my heart." ~ Page 454

"Eva is guarded in a schoolroom down on Earth, chewing her pencil, dreaming of being with me, I know it, me, looking down from amongst exfoliation apostles, dreaming of being with her." ~ Page 461

"The healthy can't understand the emptied, the broken. You'd try to list all the reasons for living but I left 'em behind at Victoria Station back in early summer. Reason I crept back down from the belvedere was that I can't have you blaming yourself for failing to dissuade me. You may anyway, but don't, Sixsmith, don't be such an ass." ~ Page 469

"People are obscenities. Would rather be music than be a mass of tubes squeezing semisolids around itself for a few decades before becoming so dribblesome it'll no longer function." ~ Page 670

"Assent was indignant & universal" ~ Page 679

"Cruelty has never made me smile." ~ Page 494

"This morn I awoke to the laments of fallen angels." ~ Page 495

"Sitting under the candlenut tree in the courtyard is pleasant in the afternoon. Laced in shadows, frangipani & coral hibiscus ward away the memory of recent evil. The sisters go about their duties, Sister Martinique tends her vegetables, the cats enact their feline comedies & tragedies." ~ Page 507

"He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human Trenna must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!
Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?" ~ Page 509