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P Quotes

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All P Quotes

“Perhaps it's the alien equivalent of a discarded tomato can. Does a beetle know why it can enter the can only from one end as it lies across the trail to the beetle's burrow? Does the beetle understand why it is harder to climb to the left or right, inside the can, than it is to follow a straight line? Would the beetle be a fool to assume the human race put the can there to torment it — or an egomaniac to believe the can was manufactured only to mystify it? It would be best for the beetle to study the can in terms of the can's logic, to the limit of the beetle's ability. In that way, at least, the beetle can proceed intelligently. It may even grasp some hint of the can's maker. Any other approach is either folly or madness.”

“Perhaps it’s time you stopped looking at work or money or reputation as the biggest source of achievement. Perhaps you can now measure your worth by how you help others and contribute to the community or how well you are growing as a person, both mentally (e.g. self-awareness and calm) and physically (eat healthier, train hard, and gain a shredded body).”

“Perhaps it was all an elaborate charade of the sort envisioned by Miles, where the dragons were large iguanas and the knights and wizards were all supplied by Central Casting. Perhaps the dream was a sham, an imitation of what the imagination would have it truly be. Even if it were all real – if it were all as described, all as the artist had rendered it to be – still it might be less than the dream. It might be as ordinary in truth as his present life.”

“Perhaps it was Maggie, perhaps not. In solitary moments magpies will perch on a branch and mutter soft soliloquies of whines and squeals and chatterings, oblivious to what goes on around them. It is one of those things, I suppose, intelligence now and then does, must in fact now and then do, must think, must play, must imagine, must talk to itself. ... What, finally, intelligence could be for: finding your way back.”

“Perhaps it was only that I did not feel any crazier than I had ever felt. I did not notice any missing gray tissue, I did not seem to be thinking any slower or more strangely, and so far I’d had no conversations with invisible buddies that I was aware of. Except in my sleep, of course-and did that really count? Weren’t we all crazy in our sleep? What was sleep, after all, but the process by which we dumped our insanity into a dark subconscious pit and came out on the other side ready to eat cereal instead of the neighbor’s children?”

“Perhaps it was simple reflex, her own instinct for survival. Or perhaps it had been his words, bringing back the horror of her mother's death. But when he reached for the satchel, Adrianne ignored the knife and brought her foot up hard between his legs. The knife clattered to the ground only seconds before he did. "Bastard," she muttered as she sent the knife careening into the dark. "Now your pride's as small as your brain and just as useless." "Well put," Philip said as he came up behind her.”

“Perhaps it was that I wanted to see what I had learned, what I had read, what I had imagined, that I would never be able to see the city of London without seeing it through the overarching scrim of every description of it I had read before. When I turn the corner into a small, quiet, leafy square, am I really seeing it fresh, or am I both looking and remembering? [...] This is both the beauty and excitement of London, and its cross to bear, too. There is a tendency for visitors to turn the place into a theme park, the Disney World of social class, innate dignity, crooked streets, and grand houses, with a cavalcade of monarchs as varied and cartoony as Mickey Mouse, Snow White, and, at least in the opinion of various Briths broadhseets, Goofy. They come, not to see what London is, or even what it was, but to confirm a kind of picture-postcard view of both, all red telephone kiosks and fog-wreathed alleyways.”

“Perhaps it was true a century ago—I deeply regret that it is no longer true—but the United States criminal justice system long ago lost any legitimate claim to the loyal cooperation of American citizens. You cannot write tens of thousands of criminal statutes, including many touching upon conduct that is neither immoral nor dangerous, write those laws as broadly as you can imagine, scatter them throughout the thousands of pages of the United States Code—and then expect decent law-abiding, unsuspecting citizens to cooperate with an investigation into whether they may have violated some law they have never even heard about. The next time some police officer or government agent asks you whether you would be willing to answer a few questions about where you have been and what you have been doing, you must respectfully but very firmly decline.”

“Perhaps it will be found that to obtain a just republic (and it is to secure our just rights that we resort to government at all) it must be so extensive as that local egoisms may never reach its greater part; that on every particular question, a majority may be found in its councils free from particular interests, and giving, therefore, an uniform prevalence to the principles of justice.”

“Perhaps it will be simplest to throw away the tags and generalize India with one all-comprehensive name, as the Land of Wonders.”

“Perhaps it won't matter, in the end, which country is the sower of the seed of exploration. The importance will be in the growth of the new plant of progress and in the fruits it will bear. These fruits will be a new breed of the human species, a human with new views, new vigor, new resiliency, and a new view of the human purpose. The plant: the tree of human destiny.”

“Perhaps it would have been easier if I said that not being able to find something is like suddenly not remembering the words to your favorite song that you knew by heart. It’s like suddenly forgetting the name of someone you know really well and see every day, or the name of a television show you watched for years. It’s something so frustrating that it plays on your mind over and over again because you know there’s an answer but no one can tell you it. It niggles and niggles at me and I can’t rest until I know the answers.”