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1 " Chance waited patiently until she stopped. "
― Jerzy Kosiński , Being There
2 " Life is a state of mind. "
3 " - Growth has its season. There are spring and summer, but there are also fall and winter. And then spring and summer again. As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all be well. "
4 " In a garden, things grow . . . but first, they must wither; trees have to lose their leaves in order to put forth new leaves, and to grow thicker and stronger and taller. Some trees die, but fresh saplings replace them. Gardens need a lot of care. But if you love your garden, you don’t mind working in it, and waiting. Then in the proper season you will surely see it flourish. "
5 " What about the war?' the young woman sitting on Chance's left said, leaning close to him.'The war? Which war?' said Chance. 'I've seen many wars on TV.''Alas,' the woman said, 'in this country, when we dream of reality television wakes us. To millions the war, I suppose, is just another TV program. But out there, at the front, real men are giving their lives. "
6 " if you love your garden, you don’t mind working in it, and waiting. Then in the proper season you will surely see it flourish. "
7 " Facing the cameras with their unsensing triple lenses pointed at him like snouts, Chance became only an image for millions of real people. They would never know how real he was, since his thinking could not be televised. And to him, the viewers existed only as projections of his own thought, as images. He would never know how real they were, since he had never met them and did not know what they thought. "
8 " There were innumerable selves that he evoked in her. "
9 " The thought that he might have to leave did not upset him; he knew that eventually he would have to go but that, as on TV, what would follow next was hidden; he knew the actors on the new program were unknown. He did not have to be afraid, for everything that happened had its sequel, and the best that he could do was to wait patiently for his own forthcoming appearance. "
10 " And yet, with all its life, even at the peak of its bloom, the garden was its own graveyard. Under every tree and bush lay rotten trunks and disintegrated and decomposing roots. It was hard to know which was more important: the garden’s surface or the graveyard from which it grew and into which it was constantly lapsing. For "
11 " In this colored world of television, gardening was the white cane of a blind man. By changing the channel he could change himself. "
12 " A gardener! Isn’t that the perfect description of what a real businessman is? A person who makes a flinty soil productive with the labor of his own hands, who waters it with the sweat of his own brow, and who creates a place of value for his family and for the community "
13 " He’s a fine man, with a sense of justice nicely contained by the law and an excellent judgment of both the pulse and purse of the electorate. "
14 " No one likes a dying man, Chauncey, because few know what death is. All we know is the terror of it. "
15 " We welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, yet we are upset by the seasons of our economy! How "
16 " Chance became only an image for millions of real people. They would never know how real he was, since his thinking could not be televised. And to him, the viewers existed only as projections of his own thought, as images. He would never know how real they were, since he had never met them and did not know what they thought. "
17 " A gardener! Isn’t that the perfect description of what a real businessman is? "
18 " Many of us forget that nature and society are one! Yes, though we have tried to cut ourselves off from nature, we are still part of it. Like nature, our economic system remains, in the long run, stable and rational, and that’s why we must not fear to be at its mercy. "
19 " Of all the manifold things there were in all the world—trees, grass, flowers, telephones, radios, elevators—only TV constantly held up a mirror to its own neither solid nor fluid face. "
