“It is better to burn than to disappear.”
“Need doesn t care about being sensible.”
“It s pretty easy to be tricked when someone has access to your mind, and you have no idea they re in there.”
“Isolation s not so bad, he thought, depending on the company.”
“If you make a deal with a fool, don t be surprised when they act foolishly.”
“How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.”
“They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings. It s what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other People or, if it s not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they d think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it d save a lot of trouble later on”
“A man who discovers his pants are on fire tends to have very little time to worry about somebody else s box of matches”
“It is absurd to hold that a man should be ashamed of an inability to defend himself with his limbs, but not ashamed of an inability to defend himself with speech and reason; for the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.”
“She was starting to think that it might be fun to be in control of the universe.”
“You can dance. You can make me laugh. You ve got x-ray eyes. You know how to sing. You re a diplomat. You ve got it all. Everybody loves you. You can charm the birds out of the sky, But I, I ve got one thing. You always know just what to say And when to go, But I ve got one thing. You can see in the dark, But I ve got one thing: I loved you better. Last night I woke up, Saw this angel. He flew in my window. And he said, Girl, pretty proud of yourself, huh? And I looked around and said, Who me? And he said, The higher you fly, the faster you fall. He said, Send it up. Watch it rise. See it fall, Gravity s rainbow. Send it up. Watch it rise. See it fall, Gravity s Angel.”
“You d be surprised how easy some things can be, things you never thought you d do, when you take self-respect out of the equation.”
“Where is that man who has forgotten words that I may have a word with him?”
“By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline,that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life.”
“This is the story of a man named Eddie and it starts at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It may seem strange to start a story with and ending, but all endings are also beginnings. We just don t know it at the time.”
“But if I decide to decide there’s a different, less selfish, less lonely point to my life, won’t the reason for this decision be my desire to be less lonely, meaning to suffer less overall pain? Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?”
“Intelligence is being intelligent enough to know you re not so intelligent as you intelligently once thought.”