The Man in the Maze Quotes

“Muller carried, thanks to the Hydrans, a deformity of the soul in an era when deformity was obsolete. It was an esthetic crime to lack a limb or an eye or a nose; these things were easily repaired, and one owed it to one’s fellow man to get a shape-up and obliterate troublesome imperfections. To inflict one’s flaws on society was clearly an antisocial act. But no shape-up surgeon could do a cosmetic job on what Muller had. The only cure was separation from society. A weaker man would have chosen death: Muller had picked exile.”
― Robert Silverberg, The Man in the Maze

“We make only a small blaze, and then we go out; but in his springtime and his summer he had burned brightly enough, and he did not feel he had earned this sullen, joyless autumn.”
― Robert Silverberg, The Man in the Maze

“Where’s the room for free will in this mechanical universe of yours, Charles?” “There isn’t any. That’s why I say the universe stinks.” “We have no freedom at all?” “The freedom to wriggle a little on the hook.”
― Robert Silverberg, The Man in the Maze

“Go to the stars, see, do. Enjoy. Eventually life will smash you, the way it smashed me, but that's far off. Sometime, never, who knows? Forget about that.”
― Robert Silverberg, The Man in the Maze

“It was hard to imagine a race that could build a city of this sort—a city designed to last millions of years.”
― Robert Silverberg, The Man in the Maze

“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed?” “Like that, yes.”
― Robert Silverberg, The Man in the Maze

“ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE. Those skeletons were part of the psychological warfare waged against all intruders by this mindless, deathless, diabolical city.”
― Robert Silverberg, The Man in the Maze

“It is a good thing, The Man in the Maze will suggest, that we are insulated from each other: we are wounded by living, by mere existence, and we could not stand the stink of each other’s souls.”
― Robert Silverberg, The Man in the Maze

“No," Rawlins persisted. He shifted about uneasily on the chair. "Now I'm going to say something that will really hurt you, Dick. I'm sorry, but I have to. What you're telling me is the kind of stuff I heard in college. Sophomore cynicism. The world is despicable, you say. Evil, evil, evil. You've seen the true nature of mankind, and you don't want to have anything to do with mankind ever again. Everybody talks that way at eighteen. But it's a phase that passes. We get over the confusions of being eighteen, and we see that the world is a pretty decent place, that people try to do their best, that we're imperfect but not loathsome—"

"An eighteen-year-old has no right to those opinions. I do. I come by my hatreds the hard way."

"But why cling to them? You seem to be glorying in your own misery. Break loose! Shake it off! Come back to Earth with us and forget the past. Or at least forgive.”
― Robert Silverberg, The Man in the Maze

“Not even hatred can corrode real honor.”
― Robert Silverberg, The Man in the Maze

“They say this is the richest era of human existence; but I think a man can be richer in knowing every atom of a single golden island in a blue sea than by spending his days striding among all the worlds.”
― Robert Silverberg, The Man in the Maze