Novelists From The United States

"He knew that soon, perhaps even today, something important was going to happen. Whether good or bad he did not know, but he darkly suspected. And with reason: there are few good things that may unexpectedly happen to a man, things, that is, of lasting importance. Disaster can strike from innumerable directions, in amazingly diverse ways."

"Most intelligent people of the eighties had developed a type of radio deafness which enabled them not to hear a human voice coming from a loud-speaker, although they could hear and enjoy the then infrequent intervals of music between announcements. In an age when advertising competition was so keen that there was scarcely a bare wall or an unbillboarded lot within miles of a population center, discriminating people could retain normal outlooks on life only by carefully cultivated partial blindness and partial deafness which enabled them to ignore the bulk of that concerted assault upon their senses."

"She was sleeping. He nudged her gently and whispered a suggestion. Her eyes opened wide and startled. "No, no, a dozen times no!" "Only a doezen times?" he asked, and then leered. "My deer," he whispered, "think of the fawn you'll have!""

"“One may think,” said the professor, “of an absolute as a mode of being—” Yeah, thought Shorty McCabe, one may think of anything as anything else, and what does it get you but a headache."

"Yes, it was swell to sleep when you were looking forward to something. Time flies by and you don’t even hear the rustle of its wings."

"The face of danger is brightest when turned so its features cannot be seen."

"“You were right, Crag,” spoke the voice in his mind. Crag wondered what he’d been right about. “About the corruptness of the race to which you belong. It is even worse than you thought of it as being. I have been inside many minds. They are weak minds, almost without exception morally weak.” Crag grinned. He thought, “I’m no lily myself.” “You are a criminal because you are a rebel against a society that has no place for strong men. In a society that is good, the weak are criminals; in a society that is bad, there is no place for a strong man except as a criminal. You are better than they, Crag. You have killed men, but you have killed them fairly. Your society kills them corruptly, by inches. Worse, those who are being killed acquiesce, not only because they are weak, but because they, too, hope to get on the exploiting side.” “You make the human race sound pretty bad.” “It is bad. This is period of decadence. It has been better and will be better again. I have studied your history and find that there were similar periods before and humanity has struggled out of them. It will again, Crag.”"

"“Please concentrate on how the system is governed.” Crag let his mind think about the two parties—both equally crooked and corrupt—that ran the planets between them, mostly by cynical horse trading methods that betrayed the common people on both sides. The Guilds and the Syndicates—popularly known as the Guilds and the Gildeds—one purporting to represent capital and the other purporting to represent labor, but actually betraying it at every opportunity. Both parties getting together to rig elections so they might win alternately and preserve an outward appearance of a balance of power and a democratic government. Justice, if any, obtainable only by bribery. Objectors or would-be reformers—and there weren’t many of either—eliminated by the hired thugs and assassins both parties used. Strict censorship of newspapers, radio and television, extending even to novels lest a writer attempt to slip in a phrase that might imply that the government under which he lived was less than perfect."

"He thought, “Anyway, do not judge the human race by my opinion of it. I am a criminal, every hand against me and my hand against every man—especially the metal hand that is my best weapon. Men have treated me badly; I have repaid them in kind. But do not judge them by what I think of them. Perhaps I am more warped than they.”"

"He had been cheated out of his compensation, on a technicality, by the corrupt officialdom of the spaceways. He’d turned criminal then, and had been as ruthless to society as it had been to him."

"One can convert to the major, organized religions or to a school of ethics, but one cannot convert to Paganism. One simply belongs to it."

"When I dug into this temple, which had been destroyed by the Christians, I was shocked... I was barely 15, yet I understood in a powerful hands-on, nonintellectual way, how harsh had been Europe's conversion to Christianity. They burned temples, smashed statues, massacred the priests and established extremely harsh laws. By 392 ce, Paganism died."

"I have no idea what forms this Paganism will have in another 30 years, I think we will be surprised. The Gods will manifest more and more--it's a matter of survival for the Earth, our Mother. That we Pagans are ever more numerous to worry over Her future is surely a sign of the Gods who act through us."

"I am taking the high road, an ascetic path, but one which to my way of thinking is the only valid path which in the long run has got what it takes. It's a slow and sometimes discouraging undertaking. At times it can seem a little bewildering. Europe is yet far from being re-Paganized, but little by little, thinkers catch the idea and feel reconquered. Generally, it doesn't take much: an image, an attitude, an experience, rather than a speech, and everything that has been repressed has come back ever so strongly. Our role is that of waker-uppers."

"I was motivated not so much by belief, as by loyalty to my Pagan ancestors, who were loyal to their Gods, worshiping underground, always resisting, and who punctuate our history."

"This current of thought, which has developed mainly in the United States in the Protestant context, claims witchcraft as its own, which makes me boil. They start off with the principle that in the European countryside a tradition of black magic has survived as an aspect of Paganism. They claim to be bringing forth an organized, conscious religion which has survived through the centuries as an underground movement. This is a historical hallucination and, alas, they are founding a Pagan renaissance upon this decadence."

"A hundred years ago, the idea was rampant in public opinion that Pagans were barbarians, grown-up children who worshiped pieces of wood. Today one tends to describe them as villains, as Nazis. In a very subtle way, Paganism is disenfranchised as a faith and presented as a highly dangerous and regressive movement."

"I have two small altars where I burn incense when I have time and I'm in the mood, but I'm not really a pious practitioner. Modern living being what it is, I am not much into practice, but my thought, on the other hand, goes on uninterrupted."

"Each man follows the path of destiny, but no two paths are alike. It seems that mine now runs into a place of evil intent, wasted wisdom, and stupidity."

"From a gabled roof the rolling melon has two choices of descent, though both lead to disaster."

"A foot of jade is of no value, an inch of time is to be prized."

"Does mud care which cloak it bespatters?"

"Jade and men are both shaped by harsh tools; be not unaware of sudden changes of fortune."

"Stout men, not stout walls, make a well-held city."

"He was listening, too, for it is through the eyes and ears that one learns. A spiderweb of facts can tie up the lion of action; not to know is bad; not to strive to know is worse."

"There was a saying of the peasants—the rat cannot call the cat to account. But it was also true that if the moon moves but slowly, still it crosses the city."

"Treasure! That word, which had always been so exciting, meant something different now. Fafnir had taken the treasure and turned from man into monster because of his greed for it. Mimir, who had been Sigurd’s master and good friend—when the treasure had lain before him, he, too, became a monster, in another way. Then Sigurd had made his choice, to leave the evil, and so he had gone away a hero."

"You can’t play the role of thug all over the galaxy and not store up in the subconscious a fine line of private fears and remembered enemies."

"Their tribal system is strictly matriarchal, which follows a pattern even Terra once knew: the fertile earth mother and her priestesses, who became the witches when the gods overruled the goddesses."

"They’re females right enough, and they can make the impossible happen. I’d say that classifies them as witches."

"And the opposite of dreams are facts!"

"Only darkness could not be held off by the will of men."

"It is always impossible—he was conscious again with that strange clarity of mind—for a man to face his own death honestly. A man always continues to believe to the last moment of his life that something will intervene to save him."

"[After The Sunday Times article dated 17 February 2019.] The media, terrified of being on the wrong side of history, responded predictably, and headlines said that Navratilova was "criticised over 'cheating' trans women comments", although this criticism came largely from a relatively unknown cyclist, Rachel McKinnon, with a history of incendiary remarks (such as that lesbians such as Navratilova should "get over their genital hang-ups" when it comes to choosing sexual partners). When Navratilova published a further blog last weekend, firmly restating her position, the headlines again suggested wrongdoing on her part, such as the BBC’s "Navratilova sorry for transgender 'cheat' language as she re-enters debate". What got notably less media attention was the support for Navratilova from other elite athletes, including Chris Evert, Billie Jean King, Sally Gunnell, Paula Radcliffe, Kelly Holmes and Nicola Adams. Arguments about gender are now so vicious that most high-profile people would rather eat their hair than speak out."

"[On transgender athletes who have not transitioned and retain male genitals.] It’s insane and it’s cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair."

"I advocate eating nutritious food (I'm a vegetarian), working out, being in top form mentally and physically."

"I've been asked who I would pay to watch to play tennis, and Roger would be one of the few."

"Labels are for filing. Labels are for clothing. Labels are not for people."

"Whoever said, "It's not whether you win or lose that counts", probably lost."

"People who are rich want to be richer, but what's the difference? You can't take it with you. The toys get different, that's all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It's all relative."

"The somewhere we're goin' to, and got to go to if we don't want to get wiped out, it's somewhere everlastingly and eternally ahead! It's like to-morrow; when we get there we aren't there; we got to keep goin', and we got to everlastingly and eternally keep goin' – and goin' fast! If we don't, the Almighty hasn't got a bit o' use for us; He turns us right into dust and scattered old bones, and nothin's left of our whole country and our finest cities except some street paving and a few cellars with weeds in 'em."

"I'm not sure he's wrong about automobiles," he said. "With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization — that is, in spiritual civilization. It may be that they will not add to the beauty of the world, nor to the life of men's souls. I am not sure. But automobiles have come, and they bring a greater change in our life than most of us suspect."

"Yes, India is the land of the Gods par excellence... The experience of the divine presence in India is within the reach of anyone who searches even a little bit. The temples are full of flowers and offerings, and you only have to flow along with the crowd, melt into it and place yourself in the hands of the Gods. I do not advocate conversion to Hinduism, but I do recommend its inspiration. I told this to the brahmins that took me into their homes. One said, 'Establish your reawakened Paganism on a valid foundation and there'll come a day when it will catch on. It won't be long.' As true Pagans, they feel no need to convert anyone."

"And life in a continual state of apprehension was no life at all."

"Mrs. Clapp was some distance away, Jeremiah’s trophy laid across one knee, stroking the cat’s head and telling him what a brave, smart boy he was. Jeremiah accepted this praise complacently, with a feline’s estimate of his own worth."

"Well, we don't know a lot, and most people don't want to learn more’n what's right before their eyes. You point out things that don’t fit into what they've always accepted, and they say it’s all your imagination and nothing like that is real."

"How quickly expectations can change one’s behavior, she thought."

"“And there you see the risk of automata,” Fox replied. “They are all well and good as amusements, I grant you. But when they are built to perform the work of men, surely this must result in the atrophy of the mental processes they replace.”"

"Though you sometimes strike me as incapable of improvement, I feel honor-bound to make the attempt."

"Poor behavior reflects will upon one’s family and upon one’s station in life. Without family and station, one lacks influence. And without influence, little of consequence can be accomplished."