Terry Bisson > Quotes

“I thought you just told me they used radio.”

They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat.”
― Terry Bisson

“This woman was truly what he wanted, and therefore he was truly afraid for the first time.”
― Terry Bisson, The Fifth Element

“Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ...”
― Terry Bisson, They're Made Out of Meat

“Through the door came a being of intense vivacity, impeccable sartorial integrity, and intermittent intelligibility.”
― Terry Bisson, The Fifth Element

“Identity lies not in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells.”
― Terry Bisson, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed

“The present, due to its staggering complexities, is almost as conjectural as the past.” —George Jackson “Dawn also has its terrors.” —Victor Hugo “America is our country, more than it is the whites’ ... we have enriched it with our blood and tears.” —David Walker “My love to all who love their neighbors.” —John Brown”
― Terry Bisson, Fire on the Mountain

“He raised his sunglasses and saw a young woman in an impossibly brief dress with an improbably welcoming smile”
― Terry Bisson, The Fifth Element

“Fire on the mountain,” the granny woman said. “They up there sharpening they swords.” Then she said that word again: freedom.”
― Terry Bisson, Fire on the Mountain

“I was very aware that the army was here to kill something hiding out (and I think the other black folks felt this as well) not only on the mountain, but inside my heart as well.”
― Terry Bisson, Fire on the Mountain

“En inglés, Borogove’” I said. “But what if I don’t finish this painting in
time?”
“Teresa, I insist, you must call me Mimsy. If you weren’t going to finish it, they would have arranged a later pickup date, since they already know what will happen. For god’s sake, girl, quit worrying. Go home and get to work! You have
until tomorrow night.”
“But I don’t even know where to start!”
"Don’t you artists have any imagination? Make something up!”
― Terry Bisson, Bears Discover Fire

“Sometimes missing things was the next best thing to having them.”
― Terry Bisson, Fire on the Mountain

“Yasmin loved the little woman with her seamed glowing face, tiny mahogany hands ghosted with flour, white hair like a veil, tied up; loved her in that way women never get to love their own mothers because there is not enough unsaid, and too much said, between them.”
― Terry Bisson, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?”
― Terry Bisson, They're Made Out of Meat

“Oh, Brown was our lion and Tubman our fox, great-grandson!”
― Terry Bisson, Fire on the Mountain

“Everybody has one thing they keep, one thing that matters to them more than anything else. Life is just a process of elimination, figuring out what that one thing is. You may figure it out right at the end, just as you’re losing it. If you’re lucky.”
― Terry Bisson, The Pickup Artist

“Antlers clicked together and knocked against the glass. A stream of caribou was splitting around the Chrysler like brown water around a red and white rock, running in a heavy million-hearted whisper north across the forest floor.”
― Terry Bisson, Talking Man

“I started back in high school in Orange County.  We used to crash cars to set off the air bags.  It sort of grew.  We figured if you packed enough kids into a Volvo with front and side air bags nobody could get seriously hurt.  We were wrong about that, but still, we had fun.”
― Terry Bisson, They're Made Out of Meat and 5 other All-Talk Tales

“Darlene died doing what she loved, which was trying to stay alive.”
― Terry Bisson, They're Made Out of Meat and 5 other All-Talk Tales

“Never tell the whole truth in a trade. A favor is an investment.”
― Terry Bisson, The Fight to Survive

“nodded. He tossed the black book (that was not really a book) into the pile with”
― Terry Bisson, The Fight to Survive

“How close the past looms, circling the present like a dead moon, lifting slow repetitious tides on the living planet.”
― Terry Bisson, Fire on the Mountain

“Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if
one were all alone”
― Terry Bisson, They're Made Out of Meat

“Boba stared”
― Terry Bisson, Crossfire

“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?”
― Terry Bisson, They're Made Out of Meat