Philip José Farmer Quotes

Shadows would be moving inside shadows; daggers would be unsheathed; the air would get gray and chill with stealth and intrigue; blood would spurt. And the sleeping would do well to stir.

Actually, the situation was intolerable. But then it was surprising how much intolerableness a man could tolerate.

"...a writing in the sand which all may read but few understand." - Philip Jose Farmer in 'Riders of the Purple Wage

The way is open, comrades, free as Space
Alone is free. The only gold is love,
A coin that we have minted from the light
Of others who have cared for us on Earth
And who have deposited in us the power
That nerves our nerves to seize the burning stars.

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

You should have waited to find out the true situation, madame. But then…scarcely anyone ever does.

as if it were a gear tooth meshed with the cog of another man’s dream and rotated into and then out of his dream.

People who believed in Him were deluded. The believers in God might be intelligent, but they were mentally benighted. The gears in that part of the brain which dealt with religion had been put into neutral, and they were spinning. Or the circuit of religion had been disconnected from the main circuit of the intellect.
That was a bad analogy. People use their intellect to justify the nonintellective, emotionally based phenomenon called religion. Often brilliantly. But, as far as she was concerned, uselessly.

Burton struggled to get up onto his feet. Nobody, not even God, was going to punch Richard Burton in the ribs and get away without a battle.

But we may not be able to climb high enough. Look at those mountains. They go straight up, smooth as a politician denying he ever made a campaign promise.

And how in God’s name did Santiago find out about the laser? Even Queen Victoria’s sex life wasn’t a better secret.

I seldom lie,' he said.

He looks like he’d be a hellcat in a fight. Tom and I agreed that he was easily the best qualified. But he doesn’t know anything about books, and I need educated people around me. That may sound snobbish, but so what?

Beauty is beautiful because it is doomed to perish!

I'm a queer crabbed old man, pent like Merlin in his tree trunk. Samolxis, the Thracian bear god, hibernating in his cave. The Last of the Seven Sleepers.