Best 35 quotes of Thomas M. Disch on MyQuotes

All children... feel a demonic sympathy with those things that cause disorder in the grown-up world.

America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature, as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend we believe.

A predilection for genre fiction is symptomatic of a kind of arrested development.

But before any of the small appliances who may be listening to this tale should begin to think that they might do the same thing, let them be warned: ELECTRICITY IS VERY DANGEROUS. Never play with old batteries! Never put your plug in a strange socket! And if you are in any doubt about the voltage of the current where you are living, ask a major appliance.

But the toaster was quite satisfied with itself, thank you. Though it knew from magazines that there were toasters who could toast four slices at a time, it didn't think that the master, who lived alone and seemed to have few friends, would have wanted a toaster of such institutional proportions. With toast, it's quality that matters, not quantity.

Creativity is the ability to see relationships where none exist.

For a lot of people, poetry tends to be dull. It's not read much. It takes a special kind of training and a lot of practice to read poetry with pleasure. It's like learning to like asparagus.

Gene Wolfe has produced a work of art that can satisfy adult appetites and in which even the most fantastical elements register as poetry rather than as penny-whistle whimsy.

Genius is an infinite capacity for pain.

Here was a flower (the daisy reflected) strangely like itself and yet utterly unlike itself too. Such a paradox has often been the basis for the most impassioned love.

It considered trying to explain their error to them, but what would be the use? They would only go away with hurt feelings. You can't always expect people, or squirrels, to be rational.

Laughter is just a slowed down scream of terror.

Let me tell you about the end of the world. It happened fifty years ago. Maybe a hundred. And since then it's been lovely. I mean it. Nobody tries to bother you. You can relax. You know what? I like the end of the world.

Poets are regarded as handicapped writers whose work must be treated with a tender condescension, such as one accords the athletic achievements of basketball players confined to wheelchairs.

Science Fiction is a branch of children's literature.

Sometimes the whole world is mud luscious and puddle wonderful

So, without saying anything to the others, it made its way to the farthest corner of the meadow and began to toast an imaginary muffin. That was always the best way to unwind when things got to be too much for it.

The distances between the stars seem brief by contrast to the distances between each of us and his fellows.

The forest stretched on seemingly forever with the most monotonous predictability, each tree just like the next - trunk, branches, leaves; trunk, branches, leaves. Of course a tree would have taken a different view of the matter. We all tend to see the way others are alike and how we differ, and it's probably just as well we do, since that prevents a great deal of confusion. But perhaps we should remind ourselves from time to time that ours is a very partial view, and that the world is full of a great deal more variety than we ever manage to take in.

The gods, after all, are only human, and once their rage has been placated they are perfectly capable of acts of mercy and grace.

Thought is a disease of the brain. The mind defends itself against the degenerative process of creativity; it begins to jell; notions solidify into inalterable systems.

Writers tend to consider distinction and originality as virtues, but they are anathema to publishers.

Behold! Behold the black, ungrainèd flesh, The jaw’s jeweled hinge that we can barely glimpse …

But there you put your finger on what it is that separates the sheep from the goats, and vice versa: imagination. Those who possess it have an afterlife; those who don't possess it, or in whom it has greatly atrophied, are reborn as plants or animals. It's as simple, and unfair, as that. You could almost say that heaven is no more than a fantasm generated by the excess energies of the pooled imaginations of the blessed.

Gender and the complications it gives rise to simply aren't relevant to the lives appliances lead.

He (and anyone else who survived) learned to be as unscrupulous as the heroes in the pulp adventure magazines he'd read as a boy--sometimes, as unscrupulous as the villains.

Hell is not merely preferable to heaven-it's the only clear notion of an afterlife-of a goal worth striving toward-that human imagination has been able to devise.

He thought proudly that many people in his position could not have adjusted, would have gone mad. Of course, he was descending.… But he was still sane. He had chosen his course and now he was following it.

In any case, muffins that are only imaginary aren't liable to get stuck.

In short, Daniel was once again a member of a family. Viewed from without they were a strange enough family: a rattling, hunchbacked old woman, a spoiled senile cocker spaniel, and a eunuch with a punctured career (for though Rey didn’t live with them, his off-stage presence was as abiding and palpable as that of any paterfamilias away every day at the office). And Daniel himself. But better to be strange together than strange apart. He was glad to have found such a haven at last, and he hoped that most familial and doomed of hopes, that nothing would change.

Sanity, however, was so integral to his character that neither hysteria nor horror could long have their way with him.

There was nothing of interest in the anteroom but a book by Valery, which I began to browse through. Almost at once I came to the following passage, which was heavily underscored: Carried away by his ambition to be unique, guided by his ardor for omnipotence, the man of great mind has gone beyond all creations, all works, even his own lofty designs; while at the same time he has abandoned all tenderness for himself and all preference for his own wishes. In an instant he immolates his individuality. . . To this point its pride has led the mind, and here pride is consumed. . . . [The mind] . . . perceives itself as destitute and bare, reduced to the supreme poverty of being a force without an object. . . . He [the genius] exists without instincts, almost without images; and he no longer has an aim. He resembles nothing. Beside this passage, someone had scrawled in the margin: "The supreme genius has ceased at last to be human.

The toaster (lacking real bread) would pretend to make two crispy slices of toast. Or, if the day seemed special in some way, it would toast an imaginary English muffin.

The very highest thoughts, pierced with this dread, plummet to earth, snapping the branches of trees. The hunter comes upon it, not quite, it is not quite dead. A wing lifts, goes limp, and lifts again. Not quite, not quite dead.

What to Accept The fact of mountains. The actuality Of any stone — by kicking, if necessary. The need to ignore stupid people, While restraining one's natural impulse To murder them. The change from your dollar, Be it no more than a penny, For without a pretense of universal penury There can be no honor between rich and poor. Love, unconditionally, or until proven false. The inevitability of cancer and/or Heart disease. The dialogue as written, Once you've taken the role. Failure, Gracefully. Any hospitality You're willing to return. The air Each city offers you to breathe. The latest hit. Assistance. All accidents. The end.