The Number of the Beast/Quotes

• Main
• Quotes
• All Subpages
• Create New

He's a mad scientist and I'm his beautiful daughter. —Deety (opening line)

"Tomorrow I will seven eagles see, a great comet will appear, and voices will speak from whirlwinds foretelling monstrous and fearful things -- this Universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract." —Zeb

"No, she's absolutely right," said Zeb, patting the enormous pistol at his hip. "This is a penis substitute. After all, if I could kill at a range of thirty meters with my penis, I wouldn't need to carry this thing around, now would I?"

Who is more real? Homer or Ulysses? Shakespeare or Hamlet? Burroughs or Tarzan?

Never encourage a man to cook breakfast; it causes him to wonder if women are necessary. If you always get his breakfast and don't raise controversial issues until after his second cup of coffee, you can get away with murder the rest of the time. They don't notice other odors when they smell bacon. —Hilda

"Sharpie, you've got a one-track mind." "It's the main track. Reproduction is the main track; the methods and mores of sexual copulation are the central feature of all higher developments of life." "You're ignoring money and television." "Piffle! All human activities including scientific research are either mating dances and care of the young, or the dismal sublimations of born losers in the only game in town."

There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many facts. Try to see a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that's science. Three: Awareness that you live in a malevolent universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset in part by Brewster's Factor: that's engineering.

"Be durned! Why do you always behave like a fritterhead?" "Why don't you ever look beneath the surface, young man! I laugh because I dare not cry. This is a crazy world and the only way to enjoy it is to treat it as a joke. That doesn't mean I don't read and can't think. I read everything from Giblett to Hoyle, from Sartre to Pauling. I read in the tub, I read on the john, I read in bed, I read when I eat alone, and I would read in my sleep if I could keep my eyes open. Deety, this is proof that Zebbie has never been in my bed; the books downstairs are display; the stuff I read is staked in my bedroom."

---

Back to The Number of the Beast