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Norman Spinrad Quotes

born 1940 United States

Norman Spinrad (born September 15, 1940) is an American science fiction author, essayist, and critic.

United States
Anarchists
Critics
Essayists
Journalists

Random Norman Spinrad quote

23 quotes

All of a sudden the house lights go out and it’s black as a network executive’s heart.

The Big Flash (1969)

Any attempt at willful ignorance would now be futile or worse; the only talisman against excessive knowledge that might have puissance would be more knowledge.

The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

To become aware of a controlling process is to transcend the determinism of that process.

What moral obligation do you have to those who willfully refuse to open their eyes and deem you mad for seeing?

The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

The appreciation of the connoisseur is the highest pleasure of the artiste.

The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

He who lives by the fine print shall perish by the fine print.

The Big Flash (1969)

Being unconcerned with ends, the military mind can be easily manipulated, easily controlled, and easily confused.

The Big Flash (1969)

Does something truly speak to me from beyond the void, or is it merely my own desire?

The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

“Genius such as yours is a genetic gift.”
“So I have heard from my parents.”

The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

At that moment, I do now truly believe, the deed was done, in the sense that the decision of the will is the true essence of the act.

The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

Even now, I cannot decide whether I was foolish dupe or noble and tragic lover. Or whether the two are one and the same.

The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

Was not the arbitrary distinction between illusion and reality the ultimate illusion itself?

The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

I could not deny that my spirit was amorally attracted to this ultimate temptation as my conscience was morally repelled by it.

The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

The carrot is mightier than the stick.

“If the path exists for spirit to transcend this sorry scheme of things entire, vraiment, it must exist for all.”
Or for none at all, I thought, but deigned not to voice.

The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

"The saddest day of your life isn't when you decide to sell out. The saddest day of your life is when you decide to sell out and nobody wants to buy."

Bug Jack Barron (1969)

Beneath all this gaiety and baroque complexity lay the simple and so carefully denied: beyond the thin metal surrounding us was the endless humorless void. Hollow rings the laughter of orphans in the night.

The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

Social morality requires a shared matrix of communal reality to which to relate thought and deed, and the illusion of an objective ethical esthetic requires at the very least the conviction that objective reality is more than a contradiction in terms.

The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

For truth be told, I was tormented by perceptions and their corollary temptation which from a social definition rendered me unsane, though from a more absolute viewpoint what I might be said to have been suffering from was an excess of insight.

The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

I want to take you as close as you can get, I want to feel your ecstasy as you feel mine, I want to bridge the final gap between us, I want us to come together in a place where each can know the other does not lie.

The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Norman Spinrad (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.