The Dice Man

by Luke Rhinehart

Life is islands of ecstasy in an ocean of ennui, and after the age of thirty land is seldom seen.

Why can’t we acknowledge and praise our inconsistency? Because we think we have a “self”; a group of behavior patterns we have mastered and have no intention of risking failure by abandoning.

A man is defined by his audience: by the people, institutions, authors, magazines, movie heroes, philosophers by whom he pictures himself being cheered and booed.

Since there is no real enemy, all of life’s wars are games,

I had to face the fact that now that I was free to be absolutely anything, I was rapidly becoming interested in absolutely nothing:

The student has moved from a world in which everyone knows that everyone is acting to one in which only a few realize that everyone is role playing.

The human is built to imitate, and every male has stored within him a thousand female gestures, phrases, attitudes and acts which long to be expressed, but are buried in the name of masculinity. It is a tragic loss.

I have been a woman on hundreds of occasions and I recommend that every other healthy, red-blooded American man be one too.