I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there?
See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.
I tend to get very suspicious of anything that thinks it’s art while it’s being created.
There’s nothing worse than sitting down to write a novel and saying, “Well, okay, I’m going to do something of high artistic worth.” It’s funny.
Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.
Did you know, young lady,” said Watkin to her, “that the Book of Revelation was written on Patmos? It was indeed. By Saint John the Divine, as you know. To me it shows very clear signs of having been written while waiting for a ferry. Oh, yes, I think so. It starts off, doesn’t it, with that kind of dreaminess you get when you’re killing time, getting bored, you know, just making things up, and then gradually grows to a sort of climax of hallucinatory despair.
The Electric Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.
Plenty of people didn’t care for him much, but there is a huge difference between disliking somebody – maybe even disliking them a lot – and actually shooting them, strangling them, dragging them through the fields and setting their house on fire. It was a difference which kept the vast majority of the population alive from day to day.
Therefore we must be mad.’ ‘Nice day for it.
She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was very clear what the other nine tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins.
Well, that was another thing that hadn’t changed. Some people pick their noses, others habitually beat up old ladies on the streets.
It seems odd, don’t you think, that the quality of the food should vary inversely with the brightness of the lighting. Makes you wonder what culinary heights the kitchen staff could rise to if you confined them to perpetual darkness.
Because the air was thick with animal hair and dust, my nose was continually inflamed and runny, and every fifteen seconds I would sneeze. Any thought I could not explore, develop, and bring to some logical conclusion within fifteen seconds would therefore be forcibly expelled from my head, along with a great deal of mucus.
In fact, he had always done the bare minimum of research necessary to support these myths. He was lazy, and essentially what he did was allow people’s enthusiastic credulity to do the work for him.
Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.
Bianchi lenzuoli irlandesi, appena inamidati, puliti, stirati, ben rimboccati – questi aggettivi erano per lui come una litania di desiderio. Da secoli nulla l’aveva attratto come ora le lenzuola. Non riusciva assolutamente a concepire come si potesse desiderare qualcos’altro. Lenzuola. E dormire. Dormire e lenzuola. Dormire nelle lenzuola. Dormire.
That isn’t to say that if you get involved in a paradox a few things won’t strike you as being very odd, but if you’ve got through life without that already happening to you, then I don’t know which Universe you’ve been living in, but it isn’t this one.
Ah. Now there you’re asking. The complexities of cause and effect defy analysis. Not only is the continuum like a human body, it is also very like a piece of badly put up wallpaper. Push down a bubble somewhere, another one pops up somewhere else. There are no more dodos because of my interference. In the end I imposed the rule on myself because I simply couldn’t bear it any more. The only thing that really gets hurt when you try and change time is yourself.” He smiled bleakly and looked away.