“It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute’s Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn’t stand was a smart ass.” – The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of knowledge… characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. (…) We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. –Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
“If I ever meet myself, I’ll hit myself so hard I won’t know what’s hit me.” – Zaphod Beeblebrox, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“They may have been ugly. They may have been evil. But when it came to poetry-in-motion, the Things had all the grace and coordination of a desk-chair.” Terry Pratchett
“There is no room in my body for anything but you. My arms love you, my knees shake with blind affection. My mind begs you to ask it something so it can obey.” – Buttercup from The Princess Bride by William Goldman
“Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active when the door was not open, it jumped out of the window.” – Henry James, Portrait of a Lady.
‘Life is pain. Anybody that says different is selling something.’ — Fezzik’s mother, The Princess Bride
“Shared Pain is Lessened, shared Joy increased, thereby do we refute Entropy…” Michael Callahan, Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson
In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. – The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“The structure of the university was such that, to become a member of the faculty, you merely found some obscure subject that nobody else claimed to teach, set up an office, and showed up at meal times. If you were unlucky, you may attract students.” – Terry Pratchett, ‘The Last Continent’
“My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre and that I am therefore excused from saving universes.” – ‘Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: part III: Life, The Universe and Everything
“God kills, and so shall we indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we. For no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves.” – Lestat, Interview With The Vampire, Anne Rice.
“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” Animal Farm, George Orwell
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons. – Popular Mechanics, 1949
‘because we are the people, and the people go on’–Ma Joad in ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ by John Steinbeck
“That’s cool,” said Zaphod. “We’ll meet the meat.” – Zaphod Beetlebrox, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
‘How can I help it?’ he blubbered. ‘How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.’ “Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.” – 1984 (George Orwell)
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. – Ford Prefect, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
‘Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.’ – Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic)
Hamlet (holding a skull): “This is Yorick, I can tell.” Horatio: “Boy, you must have known him well.” – Green Eggs and Hamlet”
The butler entered the room, a solemn procession of one. – P.G. Wodehouse
“But what was there to warn about, besides the fact that he glowed in the dark?” – Tamora Pierce
“Life; loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.” – Marvin the Paranoid Android, Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” — Jack Kerouac, On the Road
“Certain things should just stay as they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.” – Holden, ‘Catcher in the Rye’
Does the walker choose the path, or the path, the walker? – Sabriel, by Garth Nix
“This book is dedicated to my brilliant and beautiful wife without whom I would be nothing. She always comforts and consoles, never complains or interferes, asks nothing, and endures all. She also writes my dedications.” – Albert Malvino
‘And I, of course, am innocent of all but malice.’ – Fiona, Sign of the Unicorn, by Roger Zelazny
“Of all my relations I like sex the best, and Eric the least.” – Nine Princes in Amber, by Roger Zelazny
To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” – Corwin, Sign of the Unicorn
Will
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