"An accident of careless handling at a dumping point had touched off a great atomic explosion, somewhere in central Europe. That country had thought itself attacked during the disarmament hiatus, and had struck at China, which had bombarded Russia, which thought it was being attacked by America. The confusion was straightened out in less than two hours, but by then two-thirds of the world had been killed."

"For a long while I have lived with the notion that I was the most normal being that ever existed. This notion gave me the taste, even the passion for being unproductive: what was the use of being priz…"

"This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism. For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my wor…"

"Always at bottom there is a divine revelation, a divine act, and man has only had the bright idea of copying it. That is how the crafts all came into existence and is why they all have a mystical back…"

"The universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological."