33 quotes
A wife’s unique right, fixed by tradition, to manipulate her own husband runs unbroken and invariant at least back to Eve and the Apple. I will not criticize a sacred tradition.
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
This sort of nonsense should be lumped with transubstantiation. If true, it can’t be proved.
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
They were both of the extremely opposite sex and just being around them was fun.
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
I didn’t want him dead. Unless you are on a battlefield or in a hospital, a corpse is an embarrassment, hard to explain. The management was bound to be stuffy about it.
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
“This computer became self-aware and acquired free will.”
“Interesting. If true. I don’t have to believe it. I don’t.”
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
“Would you find that convincing?”
“No.” Justin Foote nodded. “Reasonable. When a rational man hears something asserted that conflicts with all common sense he will not—and should not—believe it without compelling evidence.
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
“The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it—once you can honestly say, ‘I don’t know,’ then it becomes possible to get at the truth.”
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
“Uh, I find I’m astonished again. How is this place run? Is it an anarchy?”
Hazel shrugged. Justin Foote looked thoughtful. “No, I wouldn’t say so. It is not that well organized.”
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
But I did not explain to you the other insidious aspect of writing. There is no way to stop. Writers go on writing long after it becomes financially unnecessary...because it hurts less to write than it does not to write.
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
Beloved, you startled me with the notion that bad manners could be judged a hanging offense. My only concern is for evil, rather than for bad manners. I think evil deeds should never go unpunished. God’s arrangements for punishing evil are too slow to suit me; I want it done now.
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
Quantum mechanics and Schrödinger’s cat tossed out the clockwork world of 1890 and replaced it with a fog of probability in which anything could happen. Of course the intellectual class did not notice this for many decades, as an intellectual is a highly educated man who can’t do arithmetic with his shoes on, and is proud of the lack.
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
File off the serial numbers, change the body lines a bit, give it a new paint job, switch it over the state line, and it’s yours!—that’s the secret of literary success. Editors always claim to be looking for new stories but they don’t buy them; they buy “mixture as before.” Because the cash customers want to be entertained, not amazed, not instructed, not frightened.
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
Almost all crime depends on the acquiescence of the victim. If the victim refuses his assigned role, the criminal is placed at a disadvantage, one so severe that it usually takes an understanding and compassionate judge to set things right. I had broken the rules; I had fought back.
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)