Sean Ormiston > Sean's Quotes

“Dilemma of civilized man; body mobilized, but danger obscure.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

“Now keep in mind that the typical Greek myth goes something like this: innocent shepherd boy is minding his own business, an overflying god spies him and gets a hard-on, swoops down and rapes him silly; while the victim is still staggering around in a daze, that god’s wife or lover, in a jealous rage, turns him–the helpless, innocent victim, that is–into let’s say an immortal turtle and e.g. power-staples him to a sheet of plywood with a dish of turtle food just out of his reach and leaves him out in the sun forever to be repeatedly disemboweled by army ants and stung by hornets or something. So if Arachne had dissed anyone else in the Pantheon, she would have been just a smoking hole in the ground before she knew what hit her.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“....Nature imposes nothing on you that Nature doesn't prepare you to bear.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“Soon the sun will set'- is that prophecy? No, it's merely an assertion of faith in the consistency of events.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“For Man was a culture-bearer as well as a soul-bearer, but his cultures were not immortal and they could die with a race or an age . . .”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz