50
" Yakov, if one becomes Hitler, just one - my God, you know what we've got!'
'No,' Liebermann said. 'No, I've been thinking about this for weeks. I say in my talks it takes two things to make it happen again, a new Hitler and social conditions like in the thirties. But that's not true. It takes three things: the Hitler, the conditions... and the people to follow the Hitler.'
'And don't you think he'd find them?'
'No, not enough of them. I really think people are better and smarter now, not so much thinking their leaders are God. The television makes a big difference. And history, knowing... Some he'd find, yes; but no more, I think- I hope- than the pretend Hitlers we have now... "
― Ira Levin
51
" now I want something better than vengeance, and something almost as hard to get.” He told it to the young woman in the second row: “I want remembrance.” He told it to all of them: “Remembrance. It’s hard to get because life goes on; every year we have new horrors—a Vietnam, terrorist activities in the Middle East and Ireland, assassinations”—(ninety-four sixty-five-year-old men?)—“and every year,” he drove himself on, “the horror of horrors, the Holocaust, becomes farther away, a little less horrible. But philosophers have warned us: if we forget the past, we are doomed to repeat it. "
― Ira Levin , The Boys from Brazil
52
" Ninety-four men have to die on or near certain dates in the next two and a half years,” he said, reading. “Sixteen of them are in West Germany, fourteen in Sweden, thirteen in England, twelve in the United States, ten in Norway, nine in Austria, eight in Holland, and six each in Denmark and Canada. Total, ninety-four. The first is to die on or near October sixteenth; the last, on or near the twenty-third of April, 1977.” He sat back and looked at the men again. “Why must these men die? And why on or near their particular dates?” He shook his head. “Not now; later you can be told that. But this I can tell you now: their deaths are the final step in an operation "
― Ira Levin , The Boys from Brazil
53
" What’s wrong with Bill McCormick? Can’t he run a washer? I thought he was one of our aerospace brains.” “He’s taking care of Marge,” Kit said, folding the T-shirt. “These things came out nice and white, didn’t they?” She put the folded T-shirt into the laundry basket, smiling. Like an actress in a commercial. That’s what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That’s what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing suburban housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real. "
― Ira Levin , The Stepford Wives
55
" Sylvia called to apologize - she had been passed up for a promotion she damn well knew she deserved - and Charmaine called to say they'd had a great time and to postpone a tentative Tuesday tennis date. "Ed's got a bee in his bonnet," she said. "He's taking a few days off, we're putting Merrill with the DaCostas - you don't know them, lucky you - and he and I are going to 'rediscover each other.' That means he chases me around the bed. And my period's not till next week, God damn it.
"Why not let him catch you?" Joanna said.
"Oh God," Charmaine said. "Look, I just don't enjoy having a big cock shoved into me, that's all. Never have and never will. And I'm not a lez either, because I tried it and that's no big deal. I'm just not interested in sex. I don't think any woman is, really, not even Pisces women. Are you?"
"Well I'm not a nympho," Joanna said, "but I'm interested in it, sure I am."
"Really, or do you just feel you're supposed to be?"
"Really.
"Well, to each his own," Charmaine said. "
― Ira Levin
58
" He had lain awake all night, sat awake all day, thinking of a full-grown Hitler hurling his demonic speeches at mobs too discontented to care about history. Two or three Hitlers even, maneuvering to power in different places, recognized by their followers and themselves as the first human beings bred by what in 1990 or so would be a widely known, maybe widely practiced, procedure. More alike than brothers, the same man multiplied, wouldn’t they join forces and wage again (with 1990 weapons!) their first one’s racial war? Certainly that was Mengele’s hope; Barry had said so: “It’s supposed to lead to the triumph of the Aryan race, for God’s sake!” Words to that effect. "
― Ira Levin , The Boys from Brazil