Important Quotations Explained
1. When
they lay in bed together it was—as it had to be . . . an act of
violence. . . . it was the moment made of hatred, tension, pain.
2. [Y]ou’ve
gone beyond the probable and made us see the possible, but possible
only through you. Because your figures are more devoid of contempt
of humanity than any work I’ve ever seen. . . . I came for a simple,
selfish reason . . . to seek the best.
3. He
was not the corrupt publisher of a popular empire. He was an aristocrat
aboard a yacht. He looked, she thought, like what one believes an
aristocrat to be when one is young: a brilliant kind of gaiety without
guilt.
4. Howard,
I’m a parasite. I’ve been a parasite all my life . . . I have fed
on you and all the men like you who lived before we were born. .
. . if they hadn’t existed I wouldn’t have known how to put stone
to stone. . . . I have taken that which was not mine and given nothing
in return.
5. Tell
man that he must live for others. . . . Not a single one of them
has ever achieved it and not a single one ever will. His every living
impulse screams against it. But don’t you see what you accomplish?
. . . He’ll obey. . . . Use big vague words. ‘Universal Harmony’—‘Eternal
Spirit’— ‘Divine Purpose’—‘Nirvana’—‘Paradise’—‘Racial Supremacy’—‘The
Dictatorship of the Proletariat.’
