More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Civilization is like sunshine. Spread it about, and the world blooms with culture, innovation, and fraternity. But focus it all upon one spot, and mankind scorches the earth like a ray from a magnifying glass.
“The rules of engagement,” Captain Tom Mudd explained to the irate captain who’d been duped by this ruse, “were invented by men who would benefit most from them.”
My mother says that happiness is a symptom of ignorance.”
We are, each of us, a multitude. I am not the man I was this morning, nor the man of yesterday. I am a throng of myself queued through time. We are, gentle reader, each a crowd within a crowd.
During the honeymoon days after their escape from New Babel, the Stone Cloud had seemed as glorious as a pleasure cruiser to her rescued crew. They were not blind to her flaws, of course. They perceived the knot repairs in her rigging and the subtle tilt of her deck. Her furnace was as intemperate as a two-year-old. Yet, from her filthy orlop to her frayed telltales, she was every inch their savior, and they loved her.
The man or woman who is rarely lost rarely discovers anything new.
The origin of a myth is like that of a river. It begins in obscurity as a collection of tentative, unassociated flows. It streams downhill along the path of least resistance, seeking consensus. Other fables join it, and the myth broadens and sets. We build cities on the banks of myth.
It’s meant to make our guests feel more at home.” Iren frowned at the kitschy scene. “It isn’t working.” “Well then, you must not be a guest.”
Routine is rather like the egg whites in a batter: It imparts little flavor, but it holds everything together.
The gaps in a library are like footprints in the sand: They show us where others have gone before; they assure us we are not alone.
Books are seldom more than an author elaborating upon their obsession with the grammar of self-doubt. How superior are books to authors! Nothing believes in itself so much as a book; nothing is less bothered by history or propriety. “Begin in my middle,” the book says. “Rifle straight to my end.” What difference does it make? The book comes out of white, empty flyleaves and goes into the same oblivion. And the book is never afraid.
Hope. What is its dimension? How long is it? Where does it lead? When does it become habitual, automatic, the answer not only to doubt, but also to action, and redemption, and living?
The question I keep returning to is this: When does chasing after lost love turn into self-loathing? Can a soul be loved quite sincerely and just as sincerely be lost? The disciplinarian in me wants to believe that punishment is redemptive, but if whipping were any good at reforming a man, would I not be a saint by now?
I woke up this morning thinking about what I had written last night, which is never a good sign. Ah, this is the devil of writing in ink! A pencil allows one to speculate and retract, to play a card and then renege. But ink immortalizes gestures and moods and muttered truths. If pencils were all we had, I suspect there would be far fewer books.
The essential lesson of the zoetrope is this: Movement, indeed all progress, even the passage of time, is an illusion. Life is the repetition of stillness.
Familiarity is such a cataract.
When humanity ceases to aspire, it begins to decline. Do you know why the status quo is so tyrannical and nauseating? Because it does not exist! There is no stasis in the world, and certainly not where humans are involved. The status quo is just a pleasing synonym for decay.
“We all have weaknesses. Not everyone has strengths.”
They were like the daily crockery of a public house: They’d been broken and glued back together so many times it was a miracle they retained their shape, a miracle they could still be filled and hold anything inside of them.
