Philip José Farmer Quotes

Tell me, is this true or is it just one of those tales that people like to make up to worry others?

Look at those mountains. They go straight up, smooth as a politician denying he ever made a campaign promise.

Invincible ignorance always upset him, even though he knew he should just laugh at it.

And there is another feeling, one which he shares with most of humankind. He knows he's screwed up his life, or something has twisted it. Every thinking man and woman knows this. Even the smug and dimwitted realize this unconsciously. But a baby, that beautiful being, that unsmirched blank tablet, unformed [[angel], represents a new hope. Perhaps it won't screw up. Perhaps it'll grow up to be a healthy confident reasonable good-humored unselfish loving man or woman. 'It won't be like me or my next-door neighbor,' the proud, but apprehensive, parent swears.

Burton sighed. She was, on the whole, sane. But she was also a religious fanatic who managed to ignore the facts of life and also the contradictory elements in her faith.

Death, the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Society, had arrived at last. Blackness. Nothingness. He did not even know that his heart had given out forever. Nothingness. Then his eyes opened. His heart was beating strongly. He was strong, very strong! All the pain of the gout in his feet, the agony in his liver, the torture in his heart, all were gone.
It was so quiet he could hear the blood moving in his head. He was alone in a world of soundlessness.
A bright light of equal intensity was everywhere. He could see, yet he did not understand what he was seeing. What were these things above, beside, below him? Where was he?

In a frenzy, kicking his legs and moving his arms in a swimmer's breaststroke, he managed to fight toward the rod. The closer he got to it, the stronger the web of force became. He did not give up. If he did, he would be back where he had been and without enough strength to begin fighting again. It was not his nature to give up until all his strength had been expended.

Out of nothing I come, through a world populated by asses I pass, and into nothing I go.

I had the honor to serve at the siege of Arras. Where I received a thrust through the throat, the second of the serious wounds that convinced me, along with all else I had seen of wars miseries and horrors, that Mars was the stupidest of the gods.

Rastignac had no Skin. He was, nevertheless, happier than he had been since the age of five. He was as happy as a man can be who lives deep under the ground. Underground organizations are often under the ground. They are formed into cells. Cell Number One usually contains the leader of the underground. Jean-Jacques Rastignac, chief of the Legal Underground of the Kingdom of L'Bawpfey, was literally in a cell beneath the surface of the earth. He was in jail.

At least, they tried," Johnston said.
"So did the eunuch in the sheik's harem.

Burton, though an infidel, made it his business to investigate thoroughly every religion. Know a man’s faith, and you knew at least half the man. Know his wife, and you knew the other half.

What’s that got to do with it?” Sam said. “A humorist is a man whose soul is black, black, but who turns his curdles of darkness into explosions of light. But when the light dies out, the black returns.

By the Providence that did not exist, events had worked out perfectly.

Strong blasphemers thrive only when strong believers thrive.