“We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything, solitude, hardship, exhaustion, death. We’re Proud of ourselves, but when you think about it our enthusiasm’s a sham. We don’t want other worlds. We want mirrors.”
—
Solaris
“I could tell you what’s happening, but, uh, I don’t know if that’d really tell you what’s happening.”
—
Solaris
“Isn’t that just like a wop. Brings a knife to a gun fight”
The Untouchables
“‘Hey, nothing’s impossible.’ The hippie seemed annoyed. ‘And I’ll tell you where you’ve been living: in someone else’s dream. Probably still are, or will be again soon. So relax.’”
Jonathan Lethem
Amnesia Moon
“The Motorcycle Boy!”
“I wonder why somebody hasn’t blown his head off.”
“Even the most primitive society has an innate respect for the insane.”
Rumble Fish
S.E. Hinton
“The fringe crowd looks pretty typical for the wrong side of an LA overpass in the middle of the night. There’s a good-sized shantytown of hardcore Third World unemployables, plus a scattering of schizophrenic first worlders who have long ago burned their brains to ash in the radiant heat of their own imaginings.”
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson
“I’m so obsolete I don’t have to chew my food”
Cosmopolis
Don DeLillo
“Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, Part of this complete breakfast. The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old will be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they’ll show a commercial for a children’s compressed breakfast compound such as Froot Loops or Lucky Charms, and they always show it sitting on a table next to some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer always says: Part of this complete breakfast. Don’t that really mean, Adjacent to this complete breakfast, or On the same table as this complete breakfast? And couldn’t they make essentially the same claim if, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or a dead bat?
Answer: Yes.”
–Dave Barry
“Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.”
- Heinrich Heine
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