The Essence of Nathan Biddle Quotes

“Maybe the really beautiful things are like that: little glowing sparks in the mundane darkness of everyday existence.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“We all seem to have our own reality, and even more disturbing and unnerving, our realities too often seem not to correspond very well.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“I ignored the fact that truth has its own vitality, its own primal essence like blood, and I failed to understand that love is nourished and sustained by truth.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“He leaned forward over the creek trying to maneuver the head of the retriever and then suddenly lost his footing and stepped off the bank into Catawpa Creek. He stood there in knee-deep water looking distressed and helpless but also strangely indignant. The younger guy looked like an obstetrician who’d dropped the baby.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“Everybody knows that sunflowers are devotees and worshippers of the great river god, Aqua-Molech. They are, however, morally fickle, so that by afternoon they’ve fallen away, much like the chosen people in the wilderness, and bow down to Arbor-Chemosh, the licentious tree god who twists their stamens and taunts their pistils.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“I remember thinking that if I jumped into the river the pain may go away. I raised my arms out to the side of my body and lowered my head. ‘Oh, God,’ I said, looking down at the half-shadowed stream, ‘why would you leave me here?”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“The basic physical-attraction axiom (we called it the ‘special theory of physical attraction’) is that the attractiveness of a girl is inversely proportional to your attractiveness to her. And the second law (the ‘general theory’) is equally true and immutable: The number of girls you find attractive is inversely proportional to the number who find you attractive.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“I still don’t know whether Newt was serious, but the theory, which Newt called the Third Law of Hedonics (he never revealed the first and second laws), is that for every pleasure there is an equal and opposite pain. Conversely, according to the theory, for every pain there is an equal and opposite pleasure. Thus, pain and pleasure always balance out, so that a person can take heart in travail because he’s building up an account of pleasure due, which means that, at the appropriate time, he will become the beneficiary of a compensating joy.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“It was like a race we’d tried to run until we discovered that there was no finish line.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“The situation was a prime example of the quantum yearning axiom. The Biddle-Lichtman theory of quantum yearning holds that the desirability of a thing is inversely proportional to its availability.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“That is probably some kind of moron, maybe oxy or maybe just me.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“The ‘general theory of cranial calibration,’ as Lichtman and I formulated it, is that the size of a girl’s brain is inversely proportional to size of her boobs.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“It’s like the joke about the guy who looks up in the sky and plaintively shouts, ‘Who am I?’ and a booming voice answers, ‘Who wants to know?”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“For a fledgling heron, the sum total of reality extends only to the rim of the nest and the sky above. They have no way of grasping the danger of remaining in the nest or the prospects that lie beyond. Everything outside the nest is a feral, yawping marsh that reeks of terror and strife. The fledglings have no data suggesting that the outside world offers anything but shrieking, fathomless chaos and danger. They don’t even know they can fly.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“In the empirical world, the amount of sand you move does not necessarily correspond to the size of the shovel you use.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“It is bizarre that a person exists for years before ever even wondering why. Then it seems sort of late when you finally focus on the question, and it seems silly even to ask it.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle

“I was troubled and uncomfortable, maybe because a fictitious persona is a spirit-breaking load that gets heavier by the mile. It’s very hard to be a phantom in a world of real people.”
― J. William Lewis, The Essence of Nathan Biddle