Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the Universe together into one garment for us.
What are you up to now?” “I’m sill crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it.
Kerosene,” he said, because the silence had lengthened, “is nothing but perfume to me.
Most of us can’t rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven’t time, money or that many friends. The things you’re looking for... are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book.
To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.
I don’t talk things, sir,′ said Faber. ‘I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive.
Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before death is what counts.
We all have our harps to play. And it’s up to you now to know with which ear you’ll listen.
People don’t talk about anything... No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else.
Someone who loved night arrivals and dark departures, for the hell, the fun, the death of it?
The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That’s why we’ve lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we’re almost snatching them from the cradle.
Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won’t be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely.
Jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.
Don’t listen,” whispered Faber. “He’s trying to confuse. He’s slippery. Watch out.
I never in my life argued with a piece of cake or a bowl of ice cream.
They’ll fry you, bleach you, change you! Crack you, flake you away until you’re nothing but a husband, a working man, the one with the money who pays so they can come sit in there devouring their evil chocalates! Do you think you could control them?
I’m antisocial, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it?
We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we’ll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation.
Hay solo dos cosas con las que uno se puede acostar: Una persona y un libro.
Stand by for the lovely concussion.