cycads and ferns’s Reviews > Underworld > Status Update

"You have a boo-boo, Klara."
"You can't kiss it, so go away."
"I don't want to kiss it. I want to lick it," Jack said.
"Does someone live, I'm very curious about the thing across the street there."
"Inside the little Greek temple? I think
it's an office."
"I would love to get a job there."
"Import-export."
"I could do either."

"We don't indulge ourselves in cheap and easy delusions, Sims."
"Cheap and easy."
"Am I right? You and I. We don't believe that what is behind an event is so organized and sinister that we have to make a science out of it."

"You need the leaders of both sides to keep the cold war going…when the tension and rivalry come to an end, that's when your worst nightmares begin…You will no longer be the main-what do I want to say?"
"I'm not sure."
"Point of reference. Because other forces will come rushing in…You need it to stay on top.”
"On top of what?"
"You don't know…the whole thing is geared to your dominance in the world?”

Marian and I saw products as garbage even when they sat gleaming on store shelves, yet unbought…We said, What kind of garbage will that make? Safe, clean, neat, easily disposed of? Can the package be recycled…How does it measure up as waste, we asked. We asked whether it is responsible to eat a certain item if the package the item comes in will live a million years.

…the Central Asian steppes, out where the enemy lives in long coats and fur caps, speaking that old weighted language of theirs…What secret history are they writing? There is the secret of the bomb and there are the secrets that the bomb inspires…For every atmospheric blast…that weird peeled eyeball exploding over the desert—for every one of these he reckons a hundred plots go underground….