What is possible and what is not possible is not objectively known but is, rather, a subjective belief on the part of the author and of the reader.
The idea of Saint Paul whirling around in the giant teacups wile composing First Corinthians, as Paris TV films him with a telephoto lens – that just can’t be. Saint Paul would never go near Disneyland. Only children, tourists, and visiting Soviet high officials ever go to Disneyland. Saints do not.
The alleged sheep contained an oat-tropic circuit; at the sight of such cereals it would scramble up convincingly and amble over.
Entering the phone booth, he did a phone thing.
Her heart, Bob Arctor reflected, was an empty kitchen: floor tile and water pipes and a drainboard with pale scrubbed surfaces and one abandoned glass on the edge of the sink that nobody cared about.
May I stop at that amphetamine dispenser and put in my dime? I need a stimulant to cheer me up.
The first thing to depart in mental illness is the familiar. And what takes its place is bad news because not only can you not understand it, you also cannot communicate it to other people. The madman experiences something, but what it is or where it comes from he does not know.
I think they should be the rulers,’ Juliana said, pausing. ‘They always were the best. The British.
I need you,” he said. Otherwise I’m going to die, he said to himself.
They expected miracles, evidently, as if the Nazis could remold the world by magic. No, it was science and technology and that fabulous talent for hard work; the Germans never stopped applying themselves. And when they did a task, they did it right.
You have to be with other people, he thought. In order to live at all.
One of God’s greatest mercies is that he keeps us perpetually occluded.
You have to be with other people, he thought. In order to live at all. I mean, before they came here I could stand it, being alone in the building. But now it’s changed. You can’t go back, he thought. You can’t go from people to nonpeople. In panic he thought, I’m dependent on them. Thank god they stayed.
No science in it. Nor set in future. Science fiction deals with future, in particular future where science has advanced over now. Book fits neither premise.” “But,” Paul said, “it deals with alternate present.
Half to himself, Fat said, “He causes things to look different so it would appear time has passed.
Remove his shirt,” a voice stated. No doubt building’s physician. Highly authoritative tone; Mr. Tagomi smiled. Tone is everything.
We did not fall because of a moral error; we fell because of an intellectual error: that of taking the phenomenal world as real. Therefore we are morally innocent. It is the Empire in its various disguised polyforms that tells us we have sinned.
Body of yin, soul of yang.
Isn’t it true,” Mr. Tagomi said, “that no man should be the instrument for another’s needs?” He leaned forward urgently. “Please give me your neutral Scandinavian opinion.
What did anything mean? he wondered. And how did a person tell? We can never be certain. Not until our dying day. And maybe not even then. All of us, he thought, are down here fumbling around, guessing and calculating. Doing the best we can.
10. Apollonius of Tyana, writing as Hermes Trismegistos, said, “That which is above is that which is below.” By this he meant to tell us that our universe is a hologram, but he lacked the term.