I’ve been waiting a long time for last year. But I guess it’s just not coming again.
We are absurd,” Mr. Tagomi said, “because we live by a five-thousand-year-old book. We set it questions as if it were alive. It is alive. As is the Christian Bible; many books are actually alive. Not in metaphoric fashion. Spirit animates it. Do you see?” He inspected Mr. Baynes’ face for his reaction.
In a foolish and loud manner he had argued politics; he had been rude in his disagreeing, and only the adroit tact of his host had sufficed to save the evening. How much I have to learn, Childan thought. They’re so graceful and polite. And I – the white barbarian. It is true.
He stopped to look around. Everything was silent.
That goat,” Rachael said. “You love the goat more than me. More than you love your wife, probably. First the goat, then your wife, then last of all – ” She laughed merrily. “What can you do but laugh?
The man bobbed toylike in front of him, meanwhile digging into his pocket as if scratching at a familiar micro-organism that possessed parasitic proclivities that had survived the test of time.
One seeks to contravene one’s perceptions – why? So that one can wander utterly lost, without signposts or guide?
Amazing, the power of fiction, even cheap popular fiction, to evoke. No wonder it’s banned within Reich territory;.
Jesus Christ!” I said. “You can’t sleep with a bishop!” “I already have,” Kirsten said.
Death at each moment, one avenue which is open to us at any point. And eventually we choose it, in spite of ourselves. Or we give up and take it deliberately.
The human society has evolved war as a cultural institution, like the science of astronomy, or mathematics. War is a part of our lives, a career, a respected vocation. Bright, alert young men and women move into it, putting their shoulders to the wheel as they did in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. It has always been so.
I couldn’t do that. How can you live like that? You’ve got to have people you can depend on, somebody strong, somebody to take care of you. This is a big frigid world, completely bleak and hostile and empty of warmth. You know what happens to you if you let go and fall?
Okay, I’ll come back again on Thursday.
One invisible puff-puff whisk of economically priced Ubik banishes compulsive obsessive fears that the entire world is turning into clotted milk, worn-out tape recorders and obsolete iron-cage elevators, plus other, further, as-yet-unglimpsed manifestations of decay.
Of course, the way they put it, the idea was if we had to buy our gas masks and bomb shelters we’d take better care of them. As if we ever damaged telephones and sidewalks. Or highways, because the whole state provided them. Or armies.
Going to the closet – it was the ancient-style manual variety – he hung up his coat.
A dream woke me,” Arctor said. “A religious dream. In it there was this huge clap of thunder, and all of a sudden the heavens rolled aside and God appeared and His voice rumbled at me-what the hell did He say?-oh yeah. ‘I am vexed with you, my son’ He said. He was scowling. I was shaking, in the dream, and looking up, and I said, ‘What’d I do now, Lord?’ And He said, ‘You left the cap off the toothpaste tube again.’ And then I realized it was my ex-wife.
Dial 888,” Rick said as the set warmed. “The desire to watch TV, no matter what’s on it.
His thoughts,” Helio said, “are as clear as plastic to me, and mine likewise to him. We are both prisoners, Mister, in a hostile land.” At that Arnie laughed loud and long. “Truth always amuses the ignorant,” Helio said.
We made it up and then we were stuck with what we made up.