Walter Tevis

"All day yesterday she read a new kind of writing called poems. Some of them she read aloud. In places they were like chess—incomprehensible—and in other places they said strange and interesting things…"

"Until learning how to read I had lived in a whole underpopulated world of self-centered, drug-addicted fools, all of us living by our Rules of Privacy in some crazy dream of Self-Fulfillment."

"It is the greatest achievement of my life. Yes, I have used that word: a great achievement. My learning to read was an achievement. Nobody knows that but me."

"When literacy died, so had history."

"Biff is really stupid in most ways. It’s just that she’s very real—is very much a cat—and that makes her seem intelligent to you. I can read her whole mind at a glance, and there’s very little there. …"

"It all began, I suppose, with learning to build fire—to warm the cave and keep the predators out. And it ended with time-release Valium."

"Smart is smart. I’m glad there’s some around somewhere."

"“You know,” she said, “they teach you that robots are made to serve humans. But the way they say that word ‘serve’ it sounds like ‘control.’ My father—Simon—called it ‘politician talk.’"