Metaforen är ett av tankens väsentligaste verktyg. Den belyser vad som annars skulle ligga helt i mörker. Men denna belysning blir ibland så klar att den bländar istället för avslöjar.

Numai religiile proaste sunt dependente de mistere, așa cum guvernele proaste depind de polițiile secrete – Goodwin Baxter

I don’t think anybody should read anything except for fun because you won’t learn anything unless you enjoy it.

Besides, a life without freedom to choose is not worth having.

I clenched my teeth and fists to stop them biting and scratching these clever men who want no care for the helpless sick small, who use religions and politics to stay comfortably superior to all...

Who did the council fight?””It split in two and fought itself.””That’s suicide!””No, ordinary behaviour. The efficient half eats the less efficient half and grows stronger. War is just a violent way of doing what half...

Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.

You, dear reader, have now two accounts to choose between and there can be no doubt which is most probable.

People who care nothing for their country’s stories and songs,’ he said, ‘are like people without a past- without a memory- they are half people

Baxter knows a lot more than I do, I told her.Yes, said Baxter, but I will never tell people all of it.

Movement turns dead dogs into maggots and daisies, and flour butter sugar an egg and a tablespoon of milk into Abernethy biscuits, and spermatozoa and ovaries into fishy little plants growing babyward if we take...

…there were certain chapters when I stopped writing, saw the domestic situation I was in and thought, “I don’t want to face this world, let’s get back to the hellish one I’m imagining.

I tried to scream like you once screamed God since I wanted to make the whole world faint but Harry Astley clapped his hand over my mouth O the sheer joy of feeling my teeth...

One day you will tell me how to change what I cannot yet describe without my words swelling HUGE, vowels vanishing, tears washing ink away.

He looked at them and saw their faces did not fit. The skin on the skulls crawled and twitched like half-solid paste. All the heads in his angle of vision seemed irregular lumps, like potatoes...