Sophie > Sophie's Quotes

“I want you to know, Ruth, that it was impossible to survive our time without doing wrong. It was an evil age. If we had lived in a better time, then we would have been better people.”
― Matthew De Abaitua, If Then

“It’s strange, I don’t miss her, it’s strange I don’t feel much of anything,” said Montag. “Even if she dies, I realized a moment ago, I don’t think I’ll feel sad. It isn’t right. Something must be wrong with me.”

“Listen,” said Granger, taking his arm, and walking with him, holding aside the bushes to let him pass. “When I was a boy my grandfather died, and he was a sculptor. He was also a very kind man who had a lot of love to give the world, and he helped clean up the slum in our town; and he made toys for us and he did a million things in his lifetime; he was always busy with his hands. And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the back yard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was an individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think, what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands. He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.”

Montag walked in silence. “Millie, Millie,” he whispered. “Millie.”

“What?”

“My wife, my wife. Poor Millie, poor, poor Millie. I can’t remember anything. I think of her hands but I don’t see them doing anything at all. They just hang there at her sides or they lie there in her lap or there’s a cigarette in them, but that’s all.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“You know, it's such a peculiar thing--our idea of mankind in general. We all have a sort of vague, glowing picture when we say that, something solemn, big and important. But actually all we know of it is the people we meet in our lifetime. Look at them. Do you know any you'd feel big and solemn about? There's nothing but housewives haggling at pushcarts, drooling brats who write dirty words on the sidewalks, and drunken debutantes. Or their spiritual equivalent. As a matter of fact, one can feel some respect for people when they suffer. They have a certain dignity. But have you ever looked at them when they're enjoying themselves? That's when you see the truth. Look at those who spend the money they've slaved for--at amusement parks and side shows. Look at those who're rich and have the whole world open to them. Observe what they pick out for enjoyment. Watch them in the smarter speak-easies. That's your mankind in general. I don't want to touch it.”
― Ayn Rand

“At the wheel of his slow car, Bob Arctor forgot theoretical matters and did a rerun of a moment that had impressed them all: the dainty and elegant straight girl in her turtleneck sweater and bell-bottoms and trippy boobs who wanted them to murder a great harmless bug that in fact did good by wiping out mosquitoes - and in a year in which an outbreak of encephalitis had been anticipated in Orange County - and when they saw what it was and explained, she had said words that became for them their parody evil-wall-motto, to be feared and despised:

IF I HAD KNOWN IT WAS HARMLESS I WOULD HAVE KILLED IT MYSELF.”
― Philip K. Dick

“Happiness was the responsibility you dreaded, it required the kind of rational discipline you did not value yourself enough to assume - and the anxious staleness of your days is the monument to your evasion of the knowledge that there is no moral substitute for happiness, that there is no more despicable coward than the man who deserted the battle for his joy, fearing to assert his right to existence, lacking the courage and the loyalty to life of a bird or a flower reaching for the sun. Discard the protective rags of that vice which you called a virtue: humility - learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness - and when you learn that pride is the sum of all virtues, you will learn to live like a man.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Humans make tools. Some animals make tools too. The making and using of tools is important for developing language, how we think and speak. If we do not make anything, it affects our thinking.”
― Matthew De Abaitua, If Then

“I’m not afraid of anything and I will not fight.”
― Matthew De Abaitua

“Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“I saw crime everywhere. Crime was not isolated incidents destined for ultimate solution and adjudication. Crime was the continual circumstance. It was all day, every day. The ramifications extended to the 12th of Never. This is a policeman's view of crime. I did not know it then.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Crime Writing 2005

“A mad scientist builds a monster out of body parts. The monster heads into the woods and kills a little girl. Who, then, is most responsible? The mad scientist or the monster?"
"The answer to that question is obvious, sir."
"It is?"
"Of course, sir - it's neither the scientist nor the monster."
"Then who is the most responsible?"
"The little girl in the woods."
"The little girl in the woods?"
"For failing to adequately protect herself, sir.”
― Anthony O'Neill, The Dark Side

“Lie. Lie. Lie. But remember.
Move. Move. While others sleep, move.”
― Anthony O'Neill, The Dark Side

“My job is to cry cock-a-doodle-doo - and after that, I do not give a shit.”
― Anthony O'Neill, The Dark Side

“The people who demand that the oracle predict for them really want to know next year’s price on whalefur or something equally mundane. None of them wants an instant-by-instant prediction of his personal life.”
― Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune

“I love you, Guy, and I think I shall go on loving you, but I’m not in love. I’ve had that and it was a torment, a humiliation and a warning. So now I’m settling for a quiet life with someone I respect and am very fond of and want to spend my life with.”
― P.D. James, The Lighthouse

“Torkie Macleod has always regarded himself as a realist. He doesn’t believe in life after death or divine reward or resurrection. He doesn’t even believe in leaving a legacy, insofar as anything of that nature, good or bad, is completely insignificant to the one who is dead. Torkie’s pragmatic philosophy has always been to make the most of his limited time alive, which for him means not striving for fame or riches, not ticking off a list of famous destinations, not indulging in any death-defying feats, and certainly not raising a family to “carry on his name.” to Torkie Macleod, realist, life means making decent money with limited effort, hanging around with cool people, not being bossed around by anyone, and ingesting any mind-altering substance he chooses without a scintilla of shame or regret.”
― Anthony O'Neill, The Dark Side

“I know a profound pattern humans deny with words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and quiet, conditions they call peace. Even as they speak, they create seeds of turmoil and violence.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

“So what's the point? Why do it all? Why not be content with what you've got? Who were they, that they were so discontent? Who the fuck were they?”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora

“Who desired the Great War? No nation benefitted from it. The war brought about the destruction of the Prussian Empire, stripped the British Empire of its ability to hold its colonies, slaughtered the French and starved Germany, inspired a revolution in Russia, and prepared the ground for a more terrible slaughter to come. The great powers didn’t want a war and they certainly didn’t need one. But their people wanted a war. To the surprise of the rulers across the Allies and the Central Powers, the idea of war was seized by the people of every nation.”
― Matthew De Abaitua, If Then

“I am sorrowful. I am sorrowful that I happened to be born into a world where being disgusted with yourself was what you were supposed to be. I am sorrowful that my fellow countrymen feel that being human is something to repress, something ugly, something nasty. It's... It's just a fucking shame. It really is.

I am penitent. I am penitent for all the relationships this shame has ruined. I am penitent that I've allowed my shame and unhappiness to spread to others. I've fucked men and I've fucked women, Father Kolkan. I have sucked numerous pricks, and I have had my pricked sucked by numerous people. I have fucked and been fucked. And it was lovely, really lovely. I had an excellent time doing it, and I would gladly do it again. I really would. I have been lucky enough to find and meet and come to hold beautiful people in my arms - honestly, some beautiful, lovely, brilliant people - and I am filled with regret that my awful self-hate drove them away.

I don't know if you made the world, Father Kolkan. And I don't know if you made my people or if they made themselves. But if it was your words they taught me as a child, and if it's your words that encourage this vile self-disgust, this ridiculous self-flagellation, this incredibly damaging idea that to be human and to love and to risk making mistakes is wrong, then... Well, I guess fuck you, Father Kolkan.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“I roamed L.A. by night. I got repeatedly rousted by LAPD. I sensed that a cop-street fool compact existed. I behaved accordingly. I denied all criminal intent. I acted respectfully. My height-to-weight ratio and unhygienic appearance caused some cops to taunt me. I sparred back. Street schtick often ensued. I mimicked jailhouse jigs like some WASP Richard Pryor. Rousts turned into streetside yukfests. They played like Jack Webb unhinged. I started to dig the LAPD. I started to grok cop humor. I couldn't quite peg it as performance art. I hadn't read Joseph Wambaugh yet.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Crime Writing 2005

“I do three weeks at the Hall of Justice Jail. It's a potent crime primer. I'm the geek that all the pro thugs disdain. I observe them up close. It's the '60s. It's social-grievance-as-justification-for-bad-actions time. My cellmates have sadness raps down. I gain a notch on my crime-as-continuing-circumstance notion. Crime is large-scale individual moral default.

That means you, motherfucker.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Crime Writing 2005

“Books and I went back. My old man taught me to read at age three-and-a-half. I bloomed into a classic only child/child-of-divorce autodidact.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Crime Writing 2005

“They moved me and scared me. I replayed the tapes and nailed the source of my fear. The women sounded smug. They were entrenched and content in their victimhood.”
― James Ellroy, My Dark Places

“I put on a good show. I strutted my new faith in high histrionic style. I believed what I was saying for the length of time I was saying it. I possessed a chameleon soul.”
― James Ellroy

“You opened your own eyes when you infected the terraforming team, didn't you? When you became Lante, and you realized that the great big world that was her neocortex was just a window onto something bigger, that must have really whipped the ground out from under you. You're tiny, but Lante knew she was tiny, and compared to the universe one of your cells and Lante's whole body aren't so different. And it's big, that universe. Lante knew she'd never see more than a few grains of sand out of that whole beach. Did it eat at her? At you? It ate at me. And I grasped more of it than any human being before or since. I was the queen of the human space colonization programme, and I knew it was just drops of spit into an infinite hurricane.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Ruin

“The rest of the world, meanwhile, was watching everything in real-time. Information didn't spread from one place to another. It was put online, and then it was everywhere. One day, a rumor spread that grocery store up the street might close. The next evening, when Tom drove by, he found the building completely empty. Every ounce of food had been taken, and every window had been smashed. And he realized the feedback loop was complete. It no longer mattered what the truth was. It only mattered what people thought it was.

The media fought disinformation the only way it knew how: with ideology. When the president launched a plan to suspend habeas corpus and began requisitioning private property, the media began its push to pass it. When that failed, academics and psychologists took to the airwaves to explain how, under duress, people become overcome by cognitive bias and bigotry. Studies emerged noting the correlation between obsession over keeping one's property and authoritarian political thought. When the government began confiscating weapons, other studies appeared showing the scientific link between private gun ownership and racist fear of minorities.

Then a report came out that federal employees has been seizing food from packaging centers in New York and Pennsylvania. They were shipping it out of starving communities. Everyone realized something then. Despite its claims otherwise, their government wasn't saving them. It was competing with them.”
― Scott Reardon

“You generally didn't want to tangle with a firefighter; they had muscles from hauling gear and bad attitudes from breathing toxic chemicals and remembering the screams of burning children.”
― Jason Pargin, I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom

“Once upon a time, the grownups used to go far away every day to earn money, for without money you did not have a house or food or clothes. As time passed, the grownups went away for longer and longer and the money they brought home was less and less until finally there was no money left. Where did it all go? Money wasn’t a thing like clothes or parsnips. Money was a promise. And too many people broke that promise so people did not believe in money anymore. The grownups everywhere realized they had been cheated but even the cheats lost out when no one wanted to plough the field or teach the class or even stop the bad men.”
― Matthew De Abaitua, If Then

“If but a fraction of the active torment or dull misery of the war combatants could have been transferred, not by the clumsy interpretation of picture, written or spoken word, but by some mind current affecting another human’s sensation, lighting up in another mind the unassailable and uncommunicable direct apprehension of pain, then the war would have come to an end in less weeks than it endured years.”
― Charles Masterman

“We were tolerated because our vanities could be manipulated so that we took on debt. Vainly we aspired to better ourselves and thereby society. But meritocracy was only for the poor. In reality, for all our high ideals, we were merely pretexts for debt; debt was our contribution, debt was how we created wealth. Our houses were debt. Our educations were debt. Our health was debt. Our trinkets, debt.”
― Matthew De Abaitua, If Then