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[Quoted from this book:]
Act I
VLADIMIR : (without turning). I’ve nothing to say to you.
ESTRAGON : (step forward). You’re angry? (Silence. Step forward). Forgive me. (Silence. Step forward. Estragon lays his hand on Vladimir’s shoulder.) Come, Didi. (Silence.) Give me your hand. (Vladimir half turns.) Embrace me! (Vladimir stiffens.) Don’t be stubborn! (Vladimir softens. They embrace. Estragon recoils.) You stink of garlic!
VLADIMIR : It’s for the kidneys. (Silence. Estragon looks attentively at the tree.) What do we do now?
ESTRAGON : Wait.
VLADIMIR : Yes, but while waiting.
ESTRAGON : What about hanging ourselves?
VLADIMIR : Hmm. It’d give us an erection.
ESTRAGON : (highly excited). An erection!
VLADIMIR : With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow. That’s why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that?
ESTRAGON : Let’s hang ourselves immediately!
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bookshelves: ebook, personal-collection
[Quoted from this book:]
“Mr. Rosewater—“ said a fretful man, “you don’t know me.”
“Did someone tell you that mattered?”
“I’m nothing, Mr. Rosewater. I’m worse than nothing.”
“Then God made a pretty bad mistake, didn’t he?”
“He sure did when he made me.”
“Maybe you brought your complaint to the right place.”
“What kind of a place is it, anyway?”
“How did you happen to hear of us?”
“There’s this big black and yellow sticker in the phone booth. Says, ‘Don’t Kill Yourself. Call the Rosewater Foundation’, and it’s got your number.” Such stickers were in every phone booth in the county, and in the back windows of the cars and trucks of most of the volunteer firemen, too. “You know what somebody’s written right under that in pencil?”
“No.”
“Says, ‘Eliot Rosewater is a saint. He’ll give you love and money. If you’d rather have the best piece of tail in southern Indiana, call Melissa.’ And then it’s got her number.”
“You’re a stranger in these parts?”
“I’m a stranger in all parts. But what are you anyway—some kind of religion?”
“Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptist.”
“What?”
“That’s what I generally say when people insist I must have a religion. There happens to be such a sect, and I’m sure it’s a good one. Foot-washing is practiced, and the ministers draw no pay. I wash my feet, and I draw no pay.”
“I don’t get it,” said the caller.
“Just a way of trying to put you at ease, to let you know you don’t have to be deadly serious with me. You don’t happen to be a Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptist, do you?”
“Jesus, no.”
“There are two hundred people who are, and sooner or later I’m going to say to one of them what I’ve just said to you.” Eliot took a drink. “I live in dread of that moment—and it’s sure to come.”
“You sound like a drunk. It sounded like you just took a drink.”
“Be that as it may—what can we do to help you?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“The Government.”
“The what?”
“The Government. If I’m not a Church, and I still want to keep people from killing themselves, I must be the Government. Right?”
The man muttered something.
“Or the Community Chest,” said Eliot.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“Maybe you think it’s funny to put up signs about people who want to commit suicide.”
“Are you about to?”
“And what if I was?”
“I wouldn’t tell you the gorgeous reasons I have discovered for going on living.”
“What would you do?”
“I’d ask you to name the rock-bottom price you’d charge to go on living for just one more week.”
There was a silence.
“Did you hear me?” said Eliot.
“I heard you.”
“If you’re not going to kill yourself, would you please hang up? There are other people who’d like to use the line.”
“You sound so crazy.”
“You’re the one who wants to kill himself.”
“What if I said I wouldn’t live through the next week for a million dollars?”
“I’d say, ‘Go ahead and die.’ Try a thousand.”
“A thousand.”
“Go ahead and die. Try a hundred.”
“A hundred.”
“Now you’re making sense. Come on over and talk.” He told him where his office was. “Don’t be afraid of the dogs in front of the firehouse,” he said. “They only bite when the fire horn goes off.”
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bookshelves: ebook
I always love all of Vonneguts' ideas ... :)
[Quoted from this book:]
Got a problem? Just pick up the phone.
It solved them all—and all the same way!
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by Tommy Taylor
After reading the review, cant wait to consume to whole thing T_T
I cant believe I missed this one after all this time, and actually got the recommendation from you [the author himself!:].
It's been a great honor :) ]]>
Santi
read and liked
Tommy's
review of The Second Virgin Birth:
"This is the greatest piece of American literature of this century. Or at the very least it’s worth reading. I should know. I wrote it. "
"This is the greatest piece of American literature of this century. Or at the very least it’s worth reading. I should know. I wrote it. "
bookshelves: ebook, personal-collection
[“This is one of my favorite part of this book: :)]
During my controlled near-death experiences, I’ve met Sir Isaac Newton, who died back in 1727, as often as I’ve met Saint Peter. They both hang out at the Heaven end of the blue tunnel of the Afterlife. Saint Peter is there because that’s his job. Sir Isaac is there of his insatiable curiosity about what the blue tunnel is, Low the blue tunnel works.
It isn’t enough for Newton that during his eighty-five years on Earth he invented calculus, codified and quantified the laws of gravity, motion, and optics, and designed the first reflecting telescope. He can’t forgive himself for having left it to Darwin to come up with the theory of evolution, to Pasteur to come up with the germ theory, and to Albert Einstein to come up with relativity.
“I must have been deaf, dumb, and blind not to have come up with those myself,” he said to me. “What could have been more obvious?”
My job is to interview dead people for WNYC, but the late Sir Isaac Newton interviewed me instead. He got to make only a single one-way trip down the tunnel. He wants to know what it seems to be made of, fabric or metal or wood or what. I tell him that it’s made of whatever dreams are made of, which leaves him monumentally unsatisfied.
Saint Peter quoted Shakespeare to him: There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
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Hi there,
Thanks for adding me as a friend.
It's a pleasure .. :) ]]>
bookshelves: must-have-item, to-read
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