Philip José Farmer Quotes

Beauty in this Iron Age must turn
From fluid living rainbow shapes to torn
And sootened fragments, ashes in an urn
On whose gray surface runes are traced by a Norn
Who hopes to wake the Future to arise
In Phoenix-fashion, and to shine with rays
To blast the sight of modern men whose dyes
Of selfishness and lust have stained our days...

Sawbeaked epitome of bodiless
Idea, tossed by gusts of ether, dive
Through abstract mists and raid the sea of fact
Eat rich strange fish, grow long bright feathers, press
Form's flesh around thought's rib, and so derive
From the act of beauty, beauty of the act.

Perhaps you could tell me how many angels may stand on the point of a pin?

Miles above the Earth we know,
Fancy's rocket roars. Below,
Here and Now are needles which
Sew a pattern black as pitch,
Waiting for the rocket's light.

Can imagination act
Perpendicular to fact?
Can it be a kite that flies
Till the Earth, umbrella-wise,
Folds and drops away from sight?

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.

Little eggs within bigger eggs within great eggs within a megamonolith on a planetary pear within an ovoid universe, the latest cosmogony indicating that infinity has the form of a hen's fruit. God broods over the abyss and cackles every trillion years or so.

Almost all the proofreading editors I’ve encountered seem to have gone to a college where there’s a class listed in the catalog as “How To Put Commas In The Wrong Place And The Writer In A Coma.

Sam’s heart felt as if it were being licked by a cat.

It was doubtful that their technology, and its intelligent use, would ever match their ability to create social stupidities.

Time, however, was creeping or sliding or flowing or proceeding in whatever unknown manner Time used to make Then into Now.

First, humiliation, then humility, he would have said. And then comes humanity as a matter of course.

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

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.

So here you are near the end of the world, savages, beings who, given the time, would build up a great civilization again. You don't have the time, and the long, long story, the many-eons tale of humankind, will end. For what reason? I don't know. The universe, looked at logically, is, despite all its intricate order and irresistible physical principles, senseless.