Douglas R. Hofstadter · 880 pages
Rating: (3.2K votes)
“It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.”
“I would like to understand things better, but I don’t want to understand them perfectly.”
“This computer-generated pangram contains six a's, one b, three c's, three d's, thirty-seven e's, six f's, three g's, nine h's, twelve i's, one j, one k, two l's, three m's, twenty-two n's, thirteen o's, three p's, one q, fourteen r's, twenty-nine s's, twenty-four t's, five u's, six v's, seven w's, four x's, five y's, and one z.”
“Please, Oh please, publish me in your collection of self-referential sentences!”
“Supperational thinkers, by recursive definition, include in their calculations the fact that they are in a group of superrational thinkers.”
“You're history, Donohue. You think countries run the fucking world! Go back to fucking Sunday school. It's 'God save our multinational' they're singing these days.”
“Stare at him," said Ghost. "They won't bite you if you keep staring at them."
Steve backed away. "They bite?"
Not really. They hiss at you, mostly. The only time geese are ever dangerous is when you happen to be standing on the edge of a cliff. I heard about a guy that almost got killed that way."
By geese?"
Yeah, there was a whole flock of them coming after him. All hissing and cackling and stabbing at his ankles with their big ol' beaks. He didn't know you had to stare them right in the eye, and he panicked. They backed him right over a fifty-foot cliff."
So how come he didn't die?"
This guy had wings," said Ghost. "He flew away.”
“What do you want to do?" Gabriel asks.
"Not commit suicide," I say. "Wait for Marcus.”
“Even that. What is the point in living forever, if it is not with the woman I love?”
“We were born to run; we were born because we run.”
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