But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of pastepudding norm, do you follow me?
It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time. Eckels’ mind whirled. It couldn’t change things. Killing one butterfly couldn’t be that important! Could it?
Others have criticized, and they have criticized themselves, into embarrassment.
You don’t know what it is. Every time I’m out there I think, ‘If I ever get back to Earth I’ll stay there; I’ll never go out again.’ But I go out, and I guess I’ll always go out.
By the time many people are fourteen or fifteen, they have been divested of their loves, their ancient and intuitive tastes, one by one, until when they reach maturity there is no fun left, no zest, no gusto, no flavor. Others have criticized, and they have criticized themselves, into embarrassment.
People on Earth have talked about this man for twenty centuries after he walked through the old world. We’ve all wanted to see him and hear him, and never had the chance. And now, today, we just missed seeing him by a few hours.
That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.
Right now I’ve got an awful feeling I want to smash and kill things.
I learned that I was right and everyone else wrong when I was nine.
Los que no construyen deben quemar. Es algo tan viejo como la historia y la delincuencia juvenil.
Are we polluted? We can unpollute ourselves.
Mildred had already anticipated this in a quavery voice.
They had been hiding out, waiting, given shelter by my intuitive self, all these years.
That day in the park when we sat together, I knew that some day you might drop by, with fire or friendship.
By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me.
We begin by beginning, I guess.
I’ve heard there are still hobo camps all across the country, here and there; walking camps they call them, and if you keep walking far enough and keep an eye peeled, they say there’s lots of old Harvard degrees on the tracks between here and Los Angeles.
They had been hiding out, waiting, given shelter by my intuitive self, all these years. For I am that special freak, the man with the child inside who remembers all.
Tyranny of the majority.
The courthouse clock struck the hour. The sounds blew across a town that was empty, emptier than it had ever been. Over empty streets and empty lots and empty lawns the sound faded.