Quotes From Books

[Eddie Coyle]

  "Sooner or later he brings up the Templars"

      Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum (1988) on how you can tell if somebody is nuts.

[zeebo]

  "Sooner or later he brings up the Templars"

      Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum (1988) on how you can tell if somebody is nuts.

Wild book.  I always liked this bit:

"... Potio-section, as everybody knows, of course, is the art of slicing soup. No, no," he said to Diotallevi. "It's not a department, it's a subject, like Mechanical Avunculogratulation or Pylocatabasis. They all fall under the heading of Tetrapyloctomy."

"What's tetra...?" I asked.

"The art of splitting a hair four ways. This is the department of useless techniques. Mechanical Avunculogratulation, for example, is how to build machines for greeting uncles. We're not sure, though, if Pylocatabasis belongs, since it's the art of being saved by a hair. Somehow that doesn't seem completely useless."

"All right, gentlemen," I said, "I give up. What are you two talking about?"

"Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossible courses are given. The school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects."

"And how many departments are there?"

"Four so far, but that may be enough for the whole syllabus. The Tetrapyloctomy department has a preparatory function; its purpose is to inculcate a sense of irrelevance. Another important department is Adynata, or Impossibilia. Like Urban Planning for Gypsies. The essence of the discipline is the comprehension of the underlying reasons for a thing's absurdity. We have courses in Morse syntax, the history of antarctic agriculture, the history of Easter Island painting, contemporary Sumerian literature, Montessori grading, Assyrio-Babylonian philately, the technology of the wheel in pre-Columbian empires, and the phonetics of the silent film."

"How about crowd psychology in the Sahara?"

"Wonderful," Belbo said.

Diotallevi nodded. "You should join us. The kid's got talent, eh, Jacopo?"

"Yes, I saw that right away. Last night he constructed some moronic arguments with great skill. But let's continue. What did we put in the Oxymoronics department? I can't find my notes."

Diotallevi took a slip of paper from his pocket and regarded me with friendly condescension. "In Oxymoronics, as the name implies, what matters is self-contradiction. That's why I think it's the place for Urban Planning for Gypsies."

"No," Belbo said. "Only if it were Nomadic Urban Planning. The Adynata concern empirical impossibilities; Oxymoronics deal with contradictions in terms."

"Maybe. But what courses did we put under Oxymoronics? Oh, yes, here we are: Tradition in Revolution, Democratic Oligarchy, Parmenidean Dynamics, Heraclitean Statics, Spartan Sybaritics, Tautological Dialectics, Boolean Eristic."

I couldn't resist throwing in "How about a Grammar of Solecisms?"

"Excellent!" they both said, making a note.

[Mind Flayer Monk]

I sometimes wonder if pate is Umberto Eco.

[SredniVashtar]

I sometimes wonder if pate is Umberto Eco.

I have had similar thoughts. although I wondered whether "pate" is actually an attempt by non-human life outside the universe to make contact with us, and BellGab is really just a sort of radio telescope receiving "its" transmissions. All his posts actually make sense - and are warning us about impending global catastrophe - but we are just too dumb to be able to decode them.

Or maybe he's just drunk off his ass most of the time?

One of the two...

[whoozit]

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."  -- Isaac Asimov, Foundation

Always loved this quote since I read it as a kid.  Actually got to use it on a professor when I refused to parrot back his views and explained my position.  He glared at me and said, "I really want to smack you".  So I let loose.  Cost me an A but it felt good.

[whoozit]

"Nina was going to take credit for the death of that Beatle, John."  -- Dan Simmons, Carrion Comfort

Great first sentence of a book.

[Eddie Coyle]

   Timothy Leary was not fond of Bob Dylan. The following is from Robert Greenfield's Timothy Leary:A Biography (2006) with these interviews being from circa 1976.

    "(M)ore successful in skimming the energies of the outlaw assembly line, and much more malevolent is Robert Zimmerman who first conned on to the media stage by taking the name of a lyric Welsh poet and plastic protest songs to a barbituate beat"

      " "It's All Over Now,Baby Blue" probably caused more biological and philosophical suicides than any poem in Western history...the snarling, whining, scorning of "Just Like A Woman", "It Ain't Me, Babe", "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "It's Alright, Ma" systematically converted a generation to neurotic complaint"

       "Did Dylan stand in picket lines? Get his head busted by company police? March in Selma in the hard rain? Get tear-gassed in Chicago? Sleep in the mud at Woodstock(just down the road from his comfy retreat), lay on a roach-ridden mattress in state prison? Put his body on the line for any real action? Live the fugitive life? Go into exile in the Nixon-Agnew years? Or put his nervous system on the line in the neuronaut exploration?...when an entire generation was on the move, swirling into uncharted neurogenetic territory, where was the young millionaire? Protected, dear boy, in the arms of producer Al Grossman, promoter Bill Graham, Golda Meir, Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez and a supporting brigade of mother figures"

[Eddie Coyle]

    Paul Findley, They Dare Speak Out...(1985)

     "The paradox thus becomes compounded; mainline Christians who accept the legitimacy of the Jewish faith, but question some policies of the Jewish state are branded anti-Semitic, while evangelical Christians who back Israel but doubt the theological validity of Judaism are welcome as allies"

[chefist]

    Paul Findley, They Dare Speak Out...(1985)

     "The paradox thus becomes compounded; mainline Christians who accept the legitimacy of the Jewish faith, but question some policies of the Jewish state are branded anti-Semitic, while evangelical Christians who back Israel but doubt the theological validity of Judaism are welcome as allies"

Politics trump religion in the end...

[Eddie Coyle]

  Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason(Part One) 1794

     "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit"

[chefist]

  Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason(Part One) 1794

     "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit"

In anthropology class we learned about formal and informal sanctions.  The government provides the formal (laws), and the churches provide the informal (morals).  All are meant to control human behavior. 

[3OctaveFart]

"I wanted red meat, two drinks of good whiskey, a sober night's sleep, and then I wanted to get the hell away from all of them."
                                    -James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss

[Eddie Coyle]

  Hey, remember how Bill Clinton really came down hard on Wall Street during his two terms? Yeah, me neither. But here's candidate Clinton from spring, 1992...

     "Clinton continued the attacks on Tsongas in television ads using a 1991 quote from The Boston Globe that had him(Tsongas) saying if he was elected he would be the "best friend Wall Street ever had"- a quote that Tsongas said was taken out of context"

      From Jack Germond and Jules Witcover, Mad As Hell: Revolt At The Ballot Box, 1992 (1993)

[Who]

Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage?

Desiderius Erasmus

[SredniVashtar]

Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage?

Desiderius Erasmus

That's interesting, I haven't heard that before. The only work of his I can think of offhand is the Praise of Folly. It sounds very much like the "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech from Macbeth.

[Eddie Coyle]

  From Allan MacDonnell's Prisoner of X: 20 Years In The Hole At Hustler Magazine (2006)

    "In time, a phone call came in from an opportunist claiming to offer of Donald Trump sexing his mistress, Marla Maples. The caller was businesslike and efficient. We set a meeting for the next day and at the appointed time a white male in his late 20's,displaying a close cropped military bearing,marched into the offices of my associate editors and produced an unmarked videocassette. Three editors and I watched as the television screen came to life with three-way sex action.

    "Hey, you say that's Donald Trump, but it looks a lot like Ted Turner and Jane Fonda doing some other broad." "Correct" said our visitor. "Don't you have anything on Donald Trump?" "I think this will suffice"

       He was right. My editors and I were convinced we were seeing Atlanta's most famous couple and not parallel universe doppelgangers. Even if Turner were to insist that the performers on this tape were in actuality incredible simulations, my fellows and I will believe until death that the media mogul and his icon bride had been documented in a manic kink indulgence. Ted and Jane's play friend, a tanned brunette, had plush breasts and a pleasant oval face. Ted was obviously in command. At his direction, the brunette reclined on a sofa and opened her legs. Ted positioned himself between her thighs and inserted his penis. He looked over his shoulder and waved a hand toward the camera. The focus zoomed in. The lighting and resolution were professional quality.

     "Holy shit! Ted has a fucking camera man in there with him."  In the course of our duties as Hustler editors, my three cohorts and I had thought we'd seen almost everything. This was the first time we'd ever watched what we believed to be a a two-time Oscar winning actress Jane Fonda naked and harnessed into a strap on dildo. She must have been 50 at the time. Perhaps the tits had benefited from cosmetic tweaks, but the abs and ass were exclusively her own. Also seemingly genuine was the penetration of Ted Turner's anus by Jane's strap-on while Ted was linked inside the brunette. Turner broke the cardinal rule of theater and addressed the camera: "Are you getting this?"

       The lens moved in to capture the dildo's point of entrance. Turner's buttocks heaved as he pumped into the supine brunette beneath him. Pushing up the rear guard, Jane adjusted her thrusting to the rhythm of Ted. Turner shivered in grim ecstasy. "My dick feels as big as a house", he exclaimed picking up the tempo. Jane lagged slightly behind the pitch of Ted's humping. After several awkward plunges, the dildo accidentally sprang free from Turner's ass. "Damn it, Jane" he shouted. Hurried and dutiful, the wife reinserted her phony plunger and threesome rolied to a crashing, groaning orgasm. Turner at least seemed to have a crashing, groaning orgasm. The two women may have been faking.

      Four Hustler editors in one room, and none of us had a thing to say. We shared a single thought. Someone could get killed over this. We stared at the guy who brought in the tape. "I'll bet you'll want a million dollars for this?" I said. "That's the number that came to mind".

[Juan]

I was afraid the friend was going to be a redhead.

[Caruthers612]

  Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason(Part One) 1794

     "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit"

           But Rush Limbaugh said you're not allowed to question religion.

[Caruthers612]

Politics trump religion in the end...

           What about Trump's politics?

[zeebo]

"It had been a humdrum couple of days, reaffirming his belief in reincarnation:  everything was so boring that this could not be the first time he'd experienced it."

-- Colson Whitehead, Zone One

[BobGrau]

   ...skimming the energies of the outlaw assembly line...

Pretty rich coming from Leary. Guy reminds me of Hoagland in lots of ways.

[albrecht]

"There is no reason why good cannot triumph over evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia."
Vonnegut, "The Sirens of Titan"

[Camazotz Automat]

Kids today need more Foghorn Leghorn.

- Coconut Cowboy (2016) by Tim Dorsey

[zeebo]

Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor is this a source of dismay; a lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory.

― Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

[Camazotz Automat]

Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor is this a source of dismay; a lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory.

― Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

One of the earliest books I purchased via the "Science Fiction Book Club" back in the day.

My God what a satisfying read.

[zeebo]

One of the earliest books I purchased via the "Science Fiction Book Club" back in the day.

My God what a satisfying read.

I've been working my way through a list of top 100 sci-fi books, albeit slowly.  This one was a real gem to discover.  An original, and thought-provoking book.  So many great lines, including:

If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted it myself till I met a computer with a sense of humor.