Malcolm David Brown

“Þorsteinn Surtr dreamed he was awake but everyone else was asleep; then he dreamed he fell asleep and everyone else woke up.”
― Eliot Weinberger, Karmic Traces

“I, Father, belong to another heresy: ‘Always uneasy.’ I have been battling ever since my childhood.”
“Battling with whom?”
I hesitated. Suddenly I was terror-stricken.
“With whom?” the monk repeated. Then, leaning over to me and lowering his voice: “With God?”
“Yes.”
The old man riveted his eyes on me without speaking.
“Could this be a disease, Father? How can I be cured?”
“May you never be cured!”
He raised his hand as though to bless—or curse—me.
“Alas if you had to wrestle with your equal or inferior. But since you are wrestling with God, alas if you are ever cured of this disease.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco

“God is a lamp without flame, a flame without fire, a fire without heat, a dark light, a silent rumble, a blind flash, a luminous soot, a ray of his own darkness, a circle that expands concentrating on its own center, a solitary multiplicity...”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“Qián Xuésēn (1911–2009), the Father of Chinese Rocketry, had been named first director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech when he fell victim to persecution in the anti-Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy era. He returned to China and spearheaded the work that led to the PRC exploding its first atomic bomb in 1964.”
― Linda Jaivin, The Shortest History of China