Dr. Doomstoevsky

'Well, honey, a shot never does a coke any harm!'

'It isn't enough to be soft. You've got to be soft and attractive. And I--I'm fading now! I don't know how much longer I can turn the trick.'

'God should be your comfort, but you have made comfort your god.'

'It is ugliness itself that becomes, in the end, the goal of his lechery; beauty has long since grown too weak a stimulant.'

'Was it the most crude truth that all the endless talks which had seemed to her, before they were married, the very medium of love itself, had never been to him more than a preliminary?'

I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers, had prayed as heathens mutter charms when I was in extremity; but now I prayed indeed, pleasing steadfastly and sanely, face to face with the darkness of God.

Reality is actually one thing and language something else.

I don't want you to be grateful, he says. I just want you to be happy.

He saw the white paper as the great universe of nonexistence.

Although her existence was necessary to Shevek her actual presence could be a distraction.

Privacy, in fact, was almost as desirable for physics as it was for sex.

Placing his hands behind his head, he felt himself returning to earth after having been suspended for an indeterminate length of time between delusion and enlightenment.

Perhaps the simplest way to put it is that I have a sort of crush on you." He paused for a moment, laughed and went on: "Yes, it's a matter of infatuation, a case of one man being attracted to another." Geki seemed to feel this was sufficient explanation, but Musashi was more mystified than ever.

For several days now he had watched the play of light on her body -- at night, the flickering glow of a lamp; in the daytime, the warm rays of the sun. Seeing her skin glisten with perspiration, he'd thought of the lotus blossom.

Nobody can create a worthwhile life for you but you yourself.

This sword, he reflected, would have to be his mother, his father, his brothers and sisters.