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“For a moment she was gripped by the strange idea that she wasn't even a person, but a ghost that had taken possession of a body it had seen while passing by.”

“She'd done every. thing in her power to keep him satisfied. She'd been everything he desired. He loved her. For that, wasn't she owed the right to make him do what she wanted?”

“…I swooned, under the impact of the ethical corollary.
—What is the ethical corollary?
—More.
—When you swooned, did you fall?
—I swooned upward.”

“It felt more like magic than magic. As though it could make everything all right. As if the whole world had become a different place.
But it hadn't.”

“Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.”

“Oppression follows logically from exploitation, so as to guarantee the latter.”

“Borges had written once of a distant wildfire, colored the pink of a leopard's gums. The cat was close enough now that Alice could see its raw wound of a mouth. She wondered if this was Borges's leopard. Fire in a maw, ravenous flame.”

“A red dog on a blue tree.
A blue dog on a red tree.”

Brilliant.

“Blade was born in an English brothel, and trained in hand to hand combat by a jazz trumpeter.”

“Today, when hardly any philosophical statement, no matter how daring, will be taken seriously enough to endanger the philosopher's life, even this rare chance of having a philosophical truth politically validated has disappeared.”

“She taught him about the intricacies of Chinese grammar, or really how there was none, and how in Chinese the conceptual metaphors for time and space were the opposite of in English. The Chinese believe you can see the past, but not the future, she explained; therefore you can only walk backward into the future.”

“As Aristotle put it, complete happiness was some form of study.”

“She felt, as she often did, that her body had no defined boundaries from the material world; that if she stopped holding herself together as a subject, she would dissolve like a sugar cube in tea.”

“All reasons and principles come from emptiness. The meaning of this sentence is impossible to explain—be so good as to reflect on it yourself.”

“The body of a rock is the state of an unmoving mind, powerful and large.
Something inexhaustible that comes from the universal principle exists in the body. It is through this that the power of the mind resides in every living being. The grass and trees, which do not have a consciousness, are powerfully rooted in the earth. This mind is also found in the rain and the wind.”

“The white whale may only be a symbol of death!”

“
— The body knows.
— The body is perspicacious.
— The body ain't dumb.
— Words can't say what the body knows.
“

“IF CIVILIZATION IS GOING TO LAST, IF IT'S GOING TO AMOUNT TO ANYTHING MORE THAN JUST A PLACE TO WATCH TV AND GET CHEAP SNAKE MEAT, IT WILL ONLY BE BECAUSE WE'VE LEARNED TO DO ONE THING.”
“AND WHAT'S THAT?”
“TO CARE FOR PEOPLE WHO MEAN NOTHING
TO US.”
“GROAN. THAT MUST HAVE BEEN ONE CLAMMY
NIGHT OF LOVEMAKING THAT PRODUCED YOU, FLINTSTONE. WHATEVER.I'M GOING HOME!”

“Now the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.”

Fred Flintstone: “We participated in a genocide, Barney.”
Waitress: “Scone sample?”

Fantasy audiobooks will end with the most crushing and dramatic sequence you’ve ever read and then leap right into a glossary of definitions.

“WE'RE
A CIVILIZATION
NOW, FLINTSTONE!
MEN ARE ONLY REMEMBERED
FOR THEIR
ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
YOU WANT AN AFTERLIFE?
THIS IS IT.”

“After your Scandi Noir you cross the bedroom, mark my ‘Children of Dune,’ and almost imperceptibly add atop me another quilt.”

“The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low; he also exalts.
He raises up the poor from the dust:
he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor..
For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and on them he has set the world.”

“SOMETIMES THE STALE TASTE OF MOLENCE IS THE ONLY FLAVOR THAT EXISTS.
FACES MERGE IN THE AFTER-MATH. VIOLENCE iS A BLACK HOLE, WARPING IDENTITY.”

“Had I had the black hat with me, and sufficient men and horses and lariats and .3o-3os, and popular support from the masses and a workable revolutionary ideology and/or a viable myth pattern, I would have rescued them.”

“…for despite the utterly safe appearance of the planet, there was no question as to carrying weapons. Space was deep and angry at Man. Its creatures were varied and utterly unpre-dictable. So they never took a chance.”

“In the quiet corners of your conscious mind, memories are waiting. What they call forth cannot strictly be called nightmares.”

“Ever since the uprising began, I'd felt something coursing through me, as overwhelming as any army.
Conscience.
Conscience, the most terrifying thing in the world.”

“We communists are all dead men on leave.” — Eugene Levine