Joy > Joy's Quotes

“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“Maybe I'll go where I can see stars, he said to himself as the car gained velocity and altitude; it headed away from San Francisco, toward the uninhabited desolation to the north. To the place where no living thing would go. Not unless it felt that the end had come.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“At that moment, when I had the TV sound off, I was in a 382 mood; I had just dialed it. So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn't feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting—do you see? I guess you don't. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it 'absence of appropriate affect.' So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair. So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that's a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything, about staying here on Earth after everybody who's smart has emigrated, don't you think?”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“Be still, my heart; thou hast known worse than this. On that day when the cyclops, unrestrained in fury, devoured the mighty men of my of my company; but still thou didst endure till thy craft found a way for thee forth from out the cave, where thou thoughtest to die.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”
― James Baldwin

“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”
― Hannah Arendt

“Am I going to die?' he asked one of the candles. It did not immediately answer. Its flame flickered, as if unsettled by this question. 'Only very small or very large things are immortal,' it said cautiously. 'Atoms are immortal and galaxies are immortal. That's the whole mystery. The range of death is very specific, like a radio wave.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium

“The light that fell in here was mottled by the stained-glass windows of the treetops, where every leaf was like a piece of crystal playing with the light according to its own rules. Wojnicz walked along a central nave toward an altar in the distance, not yet visible, but everything foretold it—this was a church full of labyrinths, side naves, crypts beneath the stones, tabernacles hidden in holes in the trees, altars materializing on the mossy trunks of toppled beeches. This church was not at all definite, like a man-made church, but a place of constant change: of water into life, and of light into matter. Everything here was rustling, swelling, gathering, growing and multiplying, budding and trilling. The green moss and gray lichen made the forest seem carpeted in Persian rugs—in velveteen, sheepskin, woolly felt and soft flannel. Why on earth hadn’t he come here sooner?”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

“Here we are watching them, as usual from below, we see them like big, strong columns topped by small, chattering projections—their heads. Their feet mechanically crush the forest litter, snap the small plants, tear up the moss, and squash the tiny bodies of insects that have failed to heed the vibrations heralding imminent annihilation. For a short while after they pass, beneath the forest floor the mushroom spawn quivers, that vast, immense, motherly structure transmits information to itself—where the intruders are, and in which direction they are bending their steps.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

“He preferred to belong to this world, which did not yet know him and in whose eyes he still had time to define himself. He would rather take the risk that one day this world too would disappoint him, and he would have to run away again, escape to yet another, more distant location to avoid falling into the arms of that familiar, hopeless state in which one was simply a bother to oneself and others.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium