some favorite quotes from books, and one from a song.
“i’m being ironic. don’t interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it’s not polite.” - ray bradbury
“how dreary it is to be somebody.” - emily dickinson
“the mind is the only thing about human beings that’s worth anything. why does it have to be tied to a bag of skin, blood, hair, meat, bones, and tubes? no wonder people can’t get anything done, stuck for life with a parasite that has to be stuffed with food and protected from weather and germs all the time. and the fool thing wears out anyway - no matter how much you stuff and protect it.” - kurt vonnegut
“ah, well, people can be a bit stupid about their pets.” - hagrid, wisely
“so monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. there is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent god who created the entire universe - and he’s evil. but nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.” - yuval noah harari (on theology)
“well, guy in a skeleton costumes runs up to the guy in the superman suit. RUNS THROUGH HIM WITH A BROADSWORD.” - john darnielle
“the argument goes something like this:
‘i refuse to prove i exist,’ says god, ‘for proof denies faith and without faith i am nothing.’
‘but,’ says man, ‘the babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? it could not have evolved by chance. it proves you exist, so therefore, by your own logic, you don’t.’
‘oh dear,’ says god, ‘i hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes into a puff of logic.
‘oh, that was easy,’ says man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing.” - douglas adams
“i was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning and took out a comma. in the afternoon - well, i put it back again.” - oscar wilde
“for the present is the point at which time meets infinity.” - screwtape
“it is computed, that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end.” - gulliver (as in the one from travels)
“i hated sports, and i hated people who played them, and i hated people who watched them, and i hated people who didn’t hate people who watched or played them.” - john green
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
footnotes:
been collecting good quotes as i read for over a year. the following are from the martian chronicles, “260,” “unready to wear,” harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban, sapiens: a brief history of humankind, “oceanographer’s choice,” the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, the screwtape letters, gulliver’s travels, and looking for alaska. i don’t own any of these works.