Ben > Ben's Quotes

“It wasn’t until the autumn that it really sank in, little by little. For instance, if someone had fallen down right in front of me, I like to think I’d have helped. But what if they fell fifty yards away? Would I go out of my way to help? I wonder. I might have seen it as somebody else’s business and walked on by. If I’d gotten involved I’d have been late for work …”
― Haruki Murakami, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

“Although they knew that a suspicious object had been sighted on board train B801, and knew that it had caused numerous casualties, not one person thought to take the train out of service at any point.”
― Haruki Murakami, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

“When the train stopped at both those stations, lots of passengers got off, but there was no reaction whatsoever from anyone to my turning around to open the windows. No one said a thing, everyone was so quiet. No response, no communication. I lived in America for a year, and believe me, if the same thing had happened in America there would have been a real scene. With everyone shouting, “What’s going on here?” and coming together to find the cause.”
― Haruki Murakami, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

“Note: There is no such thing as someone who speaks your language with a perfect accent but whose sentences are full of grammatical mistakes. If the person has mastered the sounds, then it follows that before that, he had the sentence structures down. People learn a language’s parts in order of difficulty.”
― John McWhorter, Talking Back, Talking Black: Truths About America's Lingua Franca

“With the Diaries he had no need for either a cult or a guru in the flesh. The book provided this American with entrée to the equivalent of a radical cultic experience.”
― Robert Jay Lifton, Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism

“A 1968 survey asking young men how they spent their free time within the last three months was topped by “reading,” followed by “drinking at home.”
― Matt Alt, Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World

“Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

“This must be Thursday,” said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. “I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“In order that some sense of mystery should still be preserved, no revelation will yet be made concerning whose upper arm sustains the bruise. This fact may safely be made the subject of suspense since it is of no significance whatsoever.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject’s brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is one of the most extraordinary ventures in the entire history of catering. It has been built on the fragmented remains of…it will be built on the fragmented…that is to say it will have been built by this time, and indeed has been—”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can’t cope with.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The absence of a thing,” the Baron said, “this can be as deadly as the presence. The absence of air, eh? The absence of water? The absence of anything else we’re addicted to.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“I went mad for a while,” said Ford, “did me no end of good.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“People who talk to themselves on the phone,” said Ford, “never learn anything to their advantage.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“IOI required its egg hunters, which it referred to as “oologists,” to use their employee numbers as their OASIS avatar names. These numbers were all six digits in length, and they also began with the numeral “6,” so everyone began calling them the Sixers. These days, most gunters referred to them as “the Sux0rz.” (Because they sucked.)”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One