Dice Man

by Luke Rhinehart

none of us knew or had any likelihood of knowing what we were doing.

“If you’re not writing, you’re not thinking,” he went on, “and if you’re not thinking you’re dead.”

“But you, Tim, are a classic case of the normal human being, and I’m not impressed.”

It was a lesson I was to learn many times in subsequent casts: the dice can show almost as poor judgment as a human.

Why did children seem to be so often spontaneous, joy-filled and concentrated while adults seemed controlled, anxiety-filled and diffused?

“Your drawings all tend to look like the thing you’re drawing, young man. You seem unable to let yourself go.”

“This essay is too logical and well-organized. You must learn to digress and be totally irrelevant.”

“We regret to inform you that your son behaves always like a man. He seems incapable of being a girl part of the time. He has been dating only girls and may need psychiatric treatment.”

“There seem to me definite limits as to what society will stand for. All sorts of eccentricity and nonsensical horrors can be permitted—wars, murder, marriage, slums—but that bowel movements should be made anywhere except in the toilet seems to be pretty universally considered despicable.”

we drag our old selves with us and they impose their solid oak frames on all our experiences.

To change man, the audience by which he judges himself must be changed.

We want people to greet each other on the street and not know who is who and not care.

“The great Goddam machine society has made us all into hamsters. We don’t see the worlds within us waiting to be born.

“You big fool,” he said. “This world is a madhouse with killers loose, torturers, sick depraved sadists running churches, corporations, countries. It could be different, could be better, and you sit on your lump of fat and toss dice.”