Thomas M. Disch

To be a gentleman is to get what you want with only an implicit threat of violence.

Part Two, Chapter 9.

I don’t believe in boredom. It’s a euphemism for laziness. People do nothing, and then complain they’re bored.

Part Three, Chapter 12.

His faith was simple. All faiths are. He would fly.

Part One, Chapter 4.

Once they put you in prison, you’re never entirely out of it again.

Part Two, Chapter 10.

Chapter Three was titled “Wash Your Own Brain” and was about techniques you could use in order to start beleving in God. Most of the techniques were based on methods of acting. Van Dyke explained that long ago religious-type people had been against plays and actors because by watching them people learned to think of all their feelings and ideas as arbitrary and interchangeable. An actor’s identity was nothing more than a hat he
put on or took off at will, and what was true for actors was true for us all. The world was a stage.
“What our Puritan forebears failed to recognize,” Van Dyke wrote, “is the evangelical application of these insights. For if the way we become the kind of people we are is by pretending, then the way to become good, devout, and faithful Christians (which, admit
it, is a well-nigh impossible undertaking) is to pretend to be good, devout, and faithful. Study the role and rehearse it energetically. You must seem to love your neighbor no matter how much you hate his guts. You must seem to accept sufferings, even if you’re drafting your suicide note. You must say that you know that your Redeemer liveth, even though you know no such thing. Eventually, saying makes it so.”

Part One, Chapter 4.

“Pleasure,” said Grandison Whiting, lighting another cigarette for himself, “is the great good. It requires no explanations, no apologies. It is what is—the reason for continuing. One must arrange one’s life so that all pleasures are available."

Part Two, Chapter 9.

Tudta, hogy nem dolgoznak, mert amikor inflienzával otthon maradt, a vékony falon át jól hallotta, ahogy ordítoznak egymással, hogy edzésben tartsák az adrenalinmirigyeiket.

Thomas M. Disch: Csótányok · Thomas M. Disch