Duplex Quotes

“Everybody thinks it’s going to be different for them, Janice said. The dinosaurs thought so too.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“This is because the Greeks had it backward, and no matter how hard humans try thinking otherwise, they still think like Greeks. For the Greeks, when you looked ahead all you saw was the past. It was like the past was the future.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“She tried to hear his heartbeat through the fabric of his tuxedo jacket, and the fact that she wasn't sure whether she could hear it made her think about how hard it was for any girl to ever know whether her love was being returned.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“A girl in a crown of stars was coming toward him, but before she could see who he was he slipped through his curtains of flesh.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“Some people think what you’re supposed to do in life is fill yourself up with loads of things like names, the more the better. But that’s not how it works.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“The world had edges but you couldn’t see them going, only when you were trying to come back.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“Everyone knew the meaning of a thing didn't emerge until there'd been an ending and you could finally see how all the parts worked together.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“Just because the world often seemed to reward ugliness was no excuse to give up on beauty.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“It isn’t time that folds, it’s space.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“There was a worm addicted to grape leaves, she continued, and suddenly it woke up. Call it a miracle, whatever, something woke it up and it wasn’t a worm anymore. It was the whole vineyard, and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks, an ever-expanding joy that didn’t need to devour anything.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“The most important thing to remember is that a duplex’s properties are stretchable but they aren’t infinite. One minute the opening will be right there in front of you, and the next minute you won’t even know where it went.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“The crickets were rubbing their hind legs together, unrolling that endless band of sound that when combined with the sound of the sycamore trees losing their heads in the heat-thickened breeze could cause even a girl as unsentimental as Mary to feel like she’d just left something behind on the porch stoop she couldn’t bear to live without.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“Apes or human – we all made the same mistake, tempted by shifting leaves or the smell of sex, by music or a ripe banana.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“As the sweet apple reddens on a high branch, high on the highest branch the apple pickers forgot -- no, not forgot: were unable to reach.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“When the Space Drift finally took place it was like everything-everything that is and has been and always will be-became for a moment like a huge thick velvet curtain, and everything that ever considered itself to be separate from anything else no longer was but only just for that moment, the moment of the Drift, while space was carrying away time in its soft dark folds like a lover.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“The curly-haired girl stayed on the bench and looked out into the dark seething ocean of park just beyond the sweet yellow tide pool of the street lamp.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“It was a late afternoon in the month of October—the "Column of the Year" as the robots called it, the month's thick almost substantive yellow light holding the rest of the year aloft above darkness lapping at its feet.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“Coming to meet her love Miss Vicks had often had this sense of thwarted will, like when a large insect flies mistakenly into a room through an open window and then keeps flying around and around, attracted to all the wrong things, mirrors or framed photographs, heat registers or—sadder still—a closed window, without ever realizing that all it needs to do is go out the window it came through and it will be guaranteed a blue sky and a fresh breeze and the prospect of a life that won’t be cut short by the angry swat of a rolled newspaper.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“She thought it was probably a good idea to like being looked at if you were a girl—it was probably key to survival. If you were a gorilla it was the other way around. Somewhere the girl had read that if you looked a gorilla in the eye it would strangle you.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“History is boring, Janice concurred, undaunted as usual. It’s not like the Ride of the Valkyries. It’s what comes before history that isn’t boring.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“The Yellow Bear made its first appearance bobbing around on the swollen waters after the Great Flood, following which it disappeared for a while. It tended to show up in periods of unusual stress or upheaval. Even though it looked like it had been made in a factory by unskilled labourers, it had been forged in the Cradle of Civilisation and was said to be the product of a collaboration between humans and machines, lending some credence to the belief that machines had been on the planet long before humans were capable of making them.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“...the beginning and the end of time. These are the same thing, as everybody knows who came into this universe via a wormhole.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“According to the prophecy a child was going to come along that would be part human and part robot and this child was going to change everything. Of course it was way too soon – both sides were totally unprepared, not to mention the fact that they had their parts mixed up. The girls were only interested in romance, and the robots in completing a transaction.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“It was cool, his finger, being made of titanium, and he used it to stroke her, first on the outside, running it over her pubic hair until she began to moan, and then sliding it inside her.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“The proximity of Mary filled him with excitement; he had to work to slow his breathing. A drop, another drop – he was flicking his penis dry. It grew long and thin, the corona pointed and cleft like a hoof.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“The irony was not lost on any of us that despite the theme there was a robot on the throne.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“I’ve heard the band is supposed to be out of this world,” Miss Vicks was saying.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“Think of them like gods, Janice said, because that’s what they are. The nape of a human neck is especially easy to see through – that’s why they love it when we bow our heads. It doesn’t have anything to do with praying. Prayers bore them.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“I think she was in a book club for a while, but she quit when they stopped talking about the books and started talking about personal things like their feelings.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex

“They never got over it. They had to harden their hearts so they wouldn't keep breaking.”
― Kathryn Davis, Duplex