Fahrenheit 451

Photo: Here

"Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can, nowadays, is happier than any man who tried to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won't be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, I've tried it; to hell with it. So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the theremin, loudly. I'll think I'm responding to the play, when it's only a tactile reaction to vibration. But I don't care. I just like solid entertainment."

Fahrenheit 451, p. 61

By Ray Bradbury

Published 1953

The Man of My Dreams

"And yet attending to things that make Hannah unhappy - it's such a natural reflex. It feels so intrinsic, it feels in some ways like who she is. The unflattering observations she makes about other people, the comments that get her in trouble, aren't these truer than small talk and thank-you notes? Worse, but truer. And underneath all the decorum, isn't most everyone judgmental and disappointed? Or is is it only certain people, and can she choose not to be one of them - can she choose this without also, like her mother, just giving in?"

The Man of My Dreams, p. 139
By Curtis Sittenfeld
Published 2006

The Magicians

Photo: Here and here.

"As much as it was like anything, magic was like a language. And like a language, textbooks and teachers treated it as an orderly system for the purposes of teaching it, but in reality it was complex and chaotic and organic. It obeyed rules only to the extent that it felt like it, and there were almost as many special cases and and one-time variations as there were rules."

The Magicians, p. 149
By Lev Grossman
Published 2009

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

"And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars don't even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in your life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means that they are so small you don't have to take them into account when you are calculating something."

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, pp. 126-127
By Mark Haddon
Published 2003

The God Delusion

"To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-down anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries. This may explain some of the sheer strangeness of the Bible. But unfortunately it is this same weird volume that religious zealots hold up to as the inerrant source of our morals and rules for living."

The God Delusion, p. 237
By Richard Dawkins
Published 2006

Dry

"I've only been here a few hours and I already feel like a mess. At my core, I am a vain and shallow person, and being in LA always brings this buried truth closer to the surface. I fear that my soul wants not tranquility and wisdom, but long, blond hair extensions that hang loosely down over my eyebrows and a ripped, liposuctioned stomach. I want pec implants and a chemical peel. I want Gucci loafers. I want Rupert Everett to be in love with me, a Range Rover and a new, small cell phone in my pocket."

Dry, p. 221
By Augusten Burroughs
Published 2003

C.O.G.

Photo: Here

"I was a smart-ass, born and raised. This had been my curse and would continue to be so. Instructing me in religious faith was like trying to teach a goat to cook a fine meal - it just wasn't going to happen. I was too greedy and inattentive, and the ultimate reward meant nothing to me."

C.O.G. from Naked, p. 199
By David Sedaris
Published 1997