Mladen > Mladen's Quotes

“It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“But—let me tell you my cat joke. It's very short and simple. A hostess is giving a dinner party and she's got a lovely five-pound T-bone steak sitting on the sideboard in the kitchen waiting to be cooked while she chats with the guests in the living room—has a few drinks and whatnot. But then she excuses herself to go into the kitchen to cook the steak—and it's gone. And there's the family cat, in the corner, sedately washing it's face."

"The cat got the steak," Barney said.

"Did it? The guests are called in; they argue about it. The steak is gone, all five pounds of it; there sits the cat, looking well-fed and cheerful. "Weigh the cat," someone says. They've had a few drinks; it looks like a good idea. So they go into the bathroom and weigh the cat on the scales. It reads exactly five pounds. They all perceive this reading and a guest says, "okay, that's it. There's the steak." They're satisfied that they know what happened, now; they've got empirical proof. Then a qualm comes to one of them and he says, puzzled, "But where's the cat?”
― Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

“Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there's twice as much of it. It always gets more and more."

"I see." The girl regarded him uncertainly, not knowing whether to believe him. Not sure if he meant it seriously.

"There's the First Law of Kipple," he said. "'Kipple drives out nonkipple.' Like Gresham's law about bad money. And in these apartments there's been nobody here to fight the kipple."

"So it has taken over completely," the girl finished. She nodded. "Now I understand."

"Your place, here," he said, "this apartment you've picked--it's too kipple-ized to live in. We can roll the kipple-factor back; we can do like I said, raid the other apts. But--" He broke off.

"But what?"

Isidore said, "We can't win."

"Why not?" [...]

"No one can win against kipple," he said, "except temporarily and maybe in one spot, like in my apartment I've sort of created a stasis between the pressure of kipple and nonkipple, for the time being. But eventually I'll die or go away, and then the kipple will again take over. It's a universal principle operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“Sometimes I think this planet is under a spell," Elias said. "We are asleep or in a trance, and something causes us to see what it wants us to see and remember and think what it wants us to remember and think. Which means we're whatever it wants us to be. Which in turn means that we have no genuine existence. We're at the mercy of some kind of whim.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Divine Invasion

“I know, too, that death is the only god who comes when you call.”
― Roger Zelazny, Frost & Fire

“Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.”
― Roger Zelazny, Prince of Chaos

“No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.”
― Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

“To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago.”
― Roger Zelazny, Sign of the Unicorn

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.”
― Neil Gaiman

“I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. ”
― W.C. Fields

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
― H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu: With a Dedication by George Henry Weiss

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
― Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

“Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can.”
― Neil Gaiman

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Human relationships flourish and decay, quickly and silently, so that those concerned scarcely know how brittle, or how inflexible, the ties that bind them have become.”
― Anthony Powell, A Question of Upbringing

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“God made food; the devil the cooks.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“The universe did not invent justice. Man did. Unfortunately, man must reside in the universe.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Dream Master

“Nothing is cheaper than past glories.”
― Roger Zelazny, This Immortal

“It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read.”
― Lemony Snicket