In meeting Betty Jo he had learned that there was a large substratum of society that was totally unaffected by this middle-class prototype, that a huge and indifferent mass of persons had virtually no ambitions and no values whatever.
You drop that load too when you find yourself an excuse. Then, afterward, all you got to do is learn to feel sorry for yourself – and lots of people learn to get their kicks that way. It’s one of the best indoor sports, feeling sorry.” Bert’s face broke into an active grin. “A sport enjoyed by all. Especially the born losers.
Do you realize that you will not only wreck your civilization, such as it is, and kill most of your people; but that you will also poison the fish in your rivers, the squirrels in your trees, the flocks of birds, the soil, the water? There are times when you seem, to us, like apes loose in a museum, carrying knives, slashing the canvases, breaking the statuary with hammers.
If I cannot read and learn and have things that are worth thinking about, I would rather immolate myself than go on living. Synthetic.
I have never in my life seemed to see and hear and think so clearly. Can it be because I have not used drugs this day? Or is it this act of writing? The two are so new and have come together so closely that I cannot be sure of which it is. It is extremely strange to feel like this. There is exhilaration to it, but the sense of risk is almost terrifying.
They were willing to accept their stringent piety, and silence, and sexual restraints, all unthinkingly, along with a few platitudes about Jesus and Moses and Noah; they were overwhelmed, however, at the effort it would require to understand the literature that was the real source of their religion. I.
When the bottles hit they tinkled and jangled noisily; but Eddie did not hear them because of the overriding – yet distant, detached, far-off – sound of his own screaming.
Did they ruin your mind when they ruined your eyes, Mr Newton?’ Newton.
The Age of Technology has rusted.
There had been a few times over the past year when she felt like this, with her mind not only dizzied but nearly terrified by the endlessness of chess.
Holy Bible begins: ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.’ It does not give the century of the ‘beginning,’ nor is it clear who ‘God’ is, or was. I am not certain whether Holy Bible is a book of history or maintenance or poetry. It names many strange people who do not seem real.
After a moment he said, ‘The teaching of reading is a crime. You could be sent to prison for it.
She had flirted with alcohol for years. Now it was time to consummate the relationship.
The archives voice was a long time replying. I had never heard a computer take so long. Or maybe it was merely the way I felt. Finally the voice came back and said, ‘Reading is the subtle and thorough sharing of ideas and feelings by underhanded means. It is a gross invasion of Privacy and a direct violation of the Constitutions of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth ages. The Teaching of Reading is equally a crime against Privacy and Personhood. One to five years on each count.
It feels terrible. Being in love feels terrible. I.
The face on the box was, Paul had told me, the face of Jesus Christ. It was used to sell a lot of things. ‘Vestigial reverence’ was the term Paul read somewhere that was supposed to be the idea, probably a hundred or more blues ago, when such things were all planned out.
When they were gone Spofforth sat at his desk for a while, wondering about the news of the man who said he could read. He had heard of reading often enough when he was young, and knew that it had died out long before. He had seen books – very ancient things. There were still a few of them left undestroyed in the University Library.
The truth of it is there’s nothing first-class made in America except television and French fries.
It’s an entire world of just 64 squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it; I can dominate it. And it’s predictable. So, if I get hurt, I only have myself to blame.
She was alone, and she liked it. It was the way she had learned everything important in her life.