Norman Spinrad

"I want to take you as close as you can get, I want to feel your ecstasy as you feel mine, I want to bridge the final gap between us, I want us to come together in a place where each can know the other…"

"“In fifteen billion years did spirit out of less than dust evolve,” he said. “In fifteen billion more will not this universe of stars to less than dust return? Whence did it come? What is there when i…"

"The appreciation of the connoisseur is the highest pleasure of the artiste."

"Does something truly speak to me from beyond the void, or is it merely my own desire?"

"Any attempt at willful ignorance would now be futile or worse; the only talisman against excessive knowledge that might have puissance would be more knowledge."

"Even now, I cannot decide whether I was foolish dupe or noble and tragic lover. Or whether the two are one and the same."

"Here, in the company of the mindless trees, the free-flying birds, the bugs and frogs that passed from stimulus directly to response without the interval of consciousness between, did I hope to lose m…"

"For truth be told, I was tormented by perceptions and their corollary temptation which from a social definition rendered me unsane, though from a more absolute viewpoint what I might be said to have b…"