Home > Work > Life: An Exploded Diagram
1 " I lived through all these times, these great events, without caring very much, concerned with my own aging rather than the world's. Most of us do likewise. History is the heavy traffic that prevents us from crossing the road. We're not especially interested in what it consists of. We wait, more or less patiently, for it to pause, so that we can get to the liquor store or the laundromat or the burger bar "
― Mal Peet , Life: An Exploded Diagram
2 " Freedom had no place in the Soviet System. Freedom was another word for anarchy, and that wouldn't do at all. "
3 " The USA and the Soviet Union each had the ability to annihilate the other. Therefore- in theory at least-neither of these growling superpowers would dare attack the other, because to do so would result in its own immolation. "
4 " Sentimentality and nostalgia are closely related. Kissing cousins. I have no time for nostalgia, though. Nostalgics believe the past is nicer than the present. It isn't. Or wasn't. Nostalgics want to cuddle the past like a puppy. But the past has bloody teeth and bad breath. I look into its mouth like a sorrowing dentist. "
5 " instead of being in history he was in love "
6 " History is the heavy traffic that prevents us from crossing the road. We're not especially interested in what it consists of. We wait, more or less patiently, for it to pause, so that we can get to the liquor store or the laundromat or the burger bar. "
7 " Unfortunately, however, weapons of mass destruction tend to attract maniacs: men - it's almost always men - who want to jab the red button and yell "Take that, you heathen infidel bastards!" and sit in their revolving chairs in underground lead-lined bunkers or caves, watching on their monitors World War III or the Final Jihad or whatever. "
8 " But I get ahead of myself, which is nearly as bad as getting Above Myself. "
9 " If there was ever a species that deserved purging from the surface of the planet, it is humanity. We are, or should be, a temporary infestation or infection, a smart virus awaiting its divine antidote. "
10 " We should just bomb them back to the Stone Age. "
11 " Wagstaff was a trim little man in a dark-blue uniform with an armband embroidered with the words CIVIL DEFENSE."Thank you, Headmaster, and good morning, young gentlemen. Yesterday, as I'm sure you'll remember, I spoke to you about the ways you can help your parents prepare their homes against the possibility of nuclear attack."Clem grinned, noting Tash Harmsworth's scowl. Tash was a bugger for an incorrect proposition. "
12 " The US military and the CIA got busy working on plans for the conquest of Cuba. And it would be no Mickey Mouse boat operation this time. This time, Fidel Castro and his hairy henchmen would find out what it felt like to have American fighter-bombers drop the fires of hell on their heads three hundred times a day. "
13 " Shit! Those sons a bitches Russians! "
14 " Kennedy was not perfectly sure that Khrushchev was an entirely rational being. He was not absolutely certain that the Soviet Union wouldn't be happy to rule a world that was half toxic ash. "
15 " It still, after all these years, puts frost into my blood to remember that men like LeMay and Powers had their fingers so close to the button. "
