Norman Spinrad Quotes

To become aware of a controlling process is to transcend the determinism of that process.

Here, in the company of the mindless trees, the free-flying birds, the bugs and frogs that passed from stimulus directly to response without the interval of consciousness between, did I hope to lose myself in the living mandala of evolution’s less self-tortured forms.

Was not the arbitrary distinction between illusion and reality the ultimate illusion itself?

I could not deny that my spirit was amorally attracted to this ultimate temptation as my conscience was morally repelled by it.

“If the path exists for spirit to transcend this sorry scheme of things entire, vraiment, it must exist for all.”
Or for none at all, I thought, but deigned not to voice.

True civilization consists precisely of conventions, rituals, and modes of oblique communication whereby the chaos within and the void without may be expressed and contained within the harmonious consensus of shared social objectivity, thus maintaining our bubble of crafted reality, the necessary illusion.

The carrot is mightier than the stick.

The saddest day of your life isn't when you decide to sell out. The saddest day of your life is when you decide to sell out and nobody wants to buy.

Even now, I cannot decide whether I was foolish dupe or noble and tragic lover. Or whether the two are one and the same.

I want to take you as close as you can get, I want to feel your ecstasy as you feel mine, I want to bridge the final gap between us, I want us to come together in a place where each can know the other does not lie.

"In fifteen billion years did spirit out of less than dust evolve," he said. "In fifteen billion more will not this universe of stars to less than dust return? Whence did it come? What is there when it is gone?"

What moral obligation do you have to those who willfully refuse to open their eyes and deem you mad for seeing?

At that moment, I do now truly believe, the deed was done, in the sense that the decision of the will is the true essence of the act.

Beneath all this gaiety and baroque complexity lay the simple and so carefully denied: beyond the thin metal surrounding us was the endless humorless void. Hollow rings the laughter of orphans in the night.

Any attempt at willful ignorance would now be futile or worse; the only talisman against excessive knowledge that might have puissance would be more knowledge.