Top 15 Parke Godwin Quotes

The therapists will have a field day and we’ll probably lose hordes to schizophrenia. But cry all they want, stomp around, kick furniture, the human race will get rid of their fairy-tale notions of good, evil and the cosmos, and by God—by Me, I guess—they will grow the hell up.

It wasn’t your usual vacation. But what’s so bad, Char? I’ve seen heaven and you’ve seen hell, and they’re just what? Common sense, funny and horrible with a lot of bullshit thrown in, just like the six o’clock news.

Infantile, needing to be the center and reason for creation, the less educated or advantaged subject needs a distorted miraculous theology to support a perilous existence, externally and constantly threatened as it is by “them.”

Subconsciously aware of the fragility of his artificial reality, the paranoiac must ever reinforce its defenses with more and more elaborate rationale. His virtues must be defined, his enemies painted in primary colors. The basic motive of fear is raised to mystic proportion; a cause, uniform, a symbol. He proclaims his purposes one with God’s.
“No—”
The central infection inflames and eventually mortifies the entire psyche until any healthy stimulus becomes alien.

Paranoia, the common cold of neurosis. The paranoiac, perceiving all external stimuli as threat, needs to see his enemies, not merely sense their external presence. Being imaginary, these threats must be fleshed out to visible targets, the more clearly defined the better.

But what's it mean," Roy cried, agonized. "What is it for?"
"Not for anything. It exists.

Roy’s cry of horror filled of the universe, more horrible for the indifferent silence that swallowed it up.

Your world is a sewer, Mr. Stride. One can almost absolve you for being one of its diseases.

Sorlij tried to imagine a place less organized than this. The concept was a challenge.

Hell, there’s no mystery between men and women, except why some poor damn fool like me ain’t figured that out yet.

Lengthy memos were always coming down from somewhere to be read, initialed and passed on. Never less than ten single-spaced pages, they boiled down to the need for efficiency and cutting paperwork.

Roy’s a fuck-up like Hitler. What’s the opposite of fail-safe? Success-safe. These turkeys have got to lose because most of their thinking is off the wall to begin with. Think about it: there’s Adolf rearranging Europe like a hyperactive housewife, shrewd as they come, and still getting his horoscope done every goddamned day, which is like seriously figuring Santa Claus into the national budget. These people are not coming from common sense; they simply can’t think big.

If respectability is the daughter of morality, her jealous sister is blackmail.

The smaller the man, the larger his power fantasies.

Judas/Jake got into the cab and and drove out of shot.
“So that’s the evilest man in the whole world ever.” Charity pondered the screen. She dunked a strawberry in champagne. “Talks mean about folks.”
“With considerable authority,” Simnel said. “A true believer at one time who would do anything to make need into truth. Now he watches the rest of them doing the same thing over and over again one way or another.”