Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World Quotes

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Think it over carefully. This is very important," I say, "because to believe something, whatever it might be, is the doing of the mind. Do you follow? When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or b...

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

You're wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise you I will find it. Everything depends on this." "I believe you," she...

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Let your body work until it is spent, but keep your mind for yourself.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Death leaves cans of shaving cream half-used.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. Was that so depressing? Who knows? Maybe that was 'despair.' What Turgenev called 'disillusionm...

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

I thought about the screws and their happiness. Maybe they were glad to be free of the eggbeater, to be independent screws, to luxuriate on white trays. It did feel good to see them happy.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Anyway, I'm in bed with her, her bracelets. Her face is a blank, so I darken the lights. Off go her silky undergarments. The bracelets are all she has on. They glint slightly, a pleasant muffled clinking on the sheets. I have a hard-on. Which, halfwa...

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Nobody chooses to evolve. It's like floods and avalanches and earthquakes. You never know what's happening until they hit, then it's too late.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Don't blame me. That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Never in my life had I seen such a slim nothing of a figure eat like such a terror.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

No two human beings are alike; it's a question of identity. And what is identity? The cognitive system arisin' from the aggregate memories of that individual's past experiences. The layman's word for this is the mind. Not two human beings have the sa...

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

The mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed—your self.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

My world foreshortened, flattening into a credit card. Seen head on, things seemed merely skewed, but from the side the view was virtually meaningless--a one-dimensional wafer. Everything about me may have been crammed in there, but it was only plast...

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World