Jeffrey Ford Quotes

Now I was stuck and could feel the tide of years suddenly beginning to rise around me.

He’s no physician, he’s Grandfather Mess. He couldn’t cure a pain in the ass unless he left the room.

Can you think of anything, my dear Mr. Fell, more intricately complex, more perfectly compact and thoroughly functional than the human eye?"
"No, sir," said August.
"I thought not," said Larchcroft. "Consider this, though. Our eyes were created by light. Without the existence of light, we would not have eyes. Over the long course of man's evolutionarily maturation to his modern condition, light sculpted these magical orbs, making subtle adjustments through the centuries, until now they are capable of the incredible process of sight. This most vital sense, not only a means of self-preservation but the single most important catalyst for culture, is a product of the inherent genius of light.

What good is the illusion of fiction if it cannot show us a way to become the people we need to be?

If he’s not crazy, he’s probably playing with your mind. He seems to have a healthy measure of mischief about him. That string tie is a good indicator.

In their exquisite self-centeredness our ancestors believed that they were alone in the universe. At the same time, they had convinced themselves that Earth was the blue apple of God’s eye and the sole reason for all of creation. This two-headed fallacy caused humanity both delusions of grandeur and a paranoiac sense of loneliness.

I understand the human brain. It's a double-edged sword. An evolutionarily development that gives you the wherewithal to know that life is basically a shit pastry one is obliged to eat slowly, and the ability to disguise that fact with beautiful delusions."
"Where do God and the cash come in?" asked Slackwell.
"The cash is the pastry part. God, he just likes to watch us eat. The more we eat the more he loves us. You can't live without love.

The wind and sun, the salt water, the hard work aged a body rapidly, and when I would look at the old man who clammed, I was too young to sense the wisdom their years on the water had bestowed upon them and saw only what I did not want to become.

My dear Philosopher," said the countess. "You give sanity a bad name.

He kneels and prays to heaven but nothing happens.

My hero was J. S. Bach. It was from his works that I came to understand mathematics and, through a greater understanding of math, came to a greater understanding of Bach—the golden ratio, the rise of complexity through the reiteration of simple elements, the presence of the cosmic in the common.

Real memories intrude now and then as do self-admonitions for a wasted life, but the smoke’s other feature is that it lets you not give a shit about anything but taking in more smoke.

Parents—so essential yet sometimes like something you have stepped in and cannot get off your shoe. What else is there but to love them?

Life was never so clear-cut as to offer anything as certain as a war between Heaven and Hell. That was for stories.

Halloween was close, our favorite holiday because it carried none of the pain-in-the-ass holiness of Christmas and still there was free candy.