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Books could hear, bite, multiply, have sex. They had sinister protocols to take over the world, to colonize and conquer—word by word, line by line, poisoning the world with meaning.
Language was not a smooth surface—it was a roller coaster, a sponge, a gateway.
If we all turned to thinking, what would be left for the government to do?
“A book censor must not enjoy what he reads.”
Schools were designed to snuff out imagination.
Reading was a bad habit, but you couldn’t keep people from doing it, just as you couldn’t keep them from smoking or having sex.
HUMAN EXISTENCE IS SUFFERING. THE ROOT OF SUFFERING IS DESIRE. THE ROOT OF DESIRE IS IMAGINATION.
that the only way to create a happy city was to empty its inhabitants of their desires, except those desires that are essential for the survival of the species.
heooollllll
“Interpretation is the responsibility of the authorities.”
“A reader never betrays another reader.”
Imagination would always find minuscule pores in the delicate skin of reality—
The balance of the world goes horribly askew when a story is confiscated; it becomes a darker, more ominous place.
“I trust the power of money. It’s magical.”
“People who make the rules are allowed to break them.”
“I’ve told you before: I can teach you everything I know. How to fool the System. How to save the books.”
And reality was something that couldn’t be pushed aside, even by a million books.
I know who I used to be before that book. I was a guardian of surfaces, then I fell down the rabbit hole,
He might suddenly think he was in a book. Or was it the book that was in him?
“What if nothing happens? What if everything goes on the way it is?”
a library was the closest thing humanity had to the idea of the Absolute.
Who controls the past … controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
His head was filled with thoughts that didn’t belong to him,
“But how do I know you are who you say you are?”
Technology is banned, except when it’s designed to skewer the people.”
Was it possible, after everything he’d been through, that heaven was right here in this nightmare of a place?
“Poor child. Reality is poisoning her blood.”
“When the world is this abysmal, getting used to it is the worst thing that can happen to you.”
Why do you want your daughter to adapt to an artificial reality?” “Because the alternative is death.”
“I’m not a hero. All I want to do is read.”
studying history—like literature—evoked unnecessary imagination.
Novels, for the most part, were a celebration of strangeness.
Why are the idiots always the ones in charge?
yes whyyyy
“We all have our bad habits,” he muttered. “Some of us smoke, some drink, and others read.”
Because all he wanted to do was to explore these books. To touch them, smell them, feel the scratch of their rough paper against his thumb. To hear the quaint rustling of turning pages.
Books grew thirsty, too, and demanded their right to be read,
“Readers as a species are nearly extinct,”
“The most ridiculous war you can ever wage is the war of one metaphor against another.”
“Nothing in real life looks like the ads.”
YOU ARE EMPTY and meaningless, and it’s for your own good to stay that way.
How would things be different if I hadn’t begun to read?
“You can’t ban imagination, no matter what you do.”
Imagination is real. Reality is imagined.
