Jeffrey Ford

Quotes

1. “Do you remember what you wished for?” asked Stan.

   “Only the one of them. I must have been ten or eleven.”

   “Did it come true?” asked Groot.

   “Hell no, I wished I’d never get old,” said Venner.

   p. 289

2. 

   After my mother finally quit drinking, she entered a brief epoch of peace in her life. Gone were the paranoia, the accusations, the belittlements, the bitter rage of judgment, the look of fear. For years, nearly every day a lost weekend, she had been possessed by the dark amber ghast of gag-sweet Taylor Cream Sherry. Living with her back then had been like living with a vampire whose bite drained but never conferred immortality.

   p. 91

3. 

   My choice of dog was the quarter pounder. That’s right, the Hindenburg of Wawa processed meat products. Two of those and you were doing a half pound of sodium nitrates (is that the stuff they use for explosives?) and animal by-products with a little food coloring added. This stuff can’t be good for you. Even while I was biting into these things, I was picturing a third eye growing in my asshole. It was Russian roulette and I was putting the barrel to my head at least twice a day. I’d become addicted to hot dogs while on the rebound from cigarettes.

   p. 129

4. 

   They’ve told so many lies in their lives that they’ve run out and can now tell only the truth.

   p. 102

5. 

   I had, at the time, an irrational, Luddite inclination that there was something morally bankrupt about making art with a computer.

   p. 187

6. 

   There is no certainty but that there is no certainty.

   p. 272

7. 

   Halloween was close, our favorite holiday because it carried none of the pain-in-the-ass holiness of Christmas and still there was free candy.

   p. 160

8. 

   Parents—so essential yet sometimes like something you have stepped in and cannot get off your shoe. What else is there but to love them?

   p. 56

9. 

   Now I was stuck and could feel the tide of years suddenly beginning to rise around me.

   p. 307

10. 

    My hero was J. S. Bach. It was from his works that I came to understand mathematics and, through a greater understanding of math, came to a greater understanding of Bach—the golden ratio, the rise of complexity through the reiteration of simple elements, the presence of the cosmic in the common.

    p. 58

11. 

    Nothing is more comforting to people than to have their certainties trumpeted back to them in bold, clear typeface.

    p. 291

12. 

    “Can you think of anything, my dear Mr. Fell, more intricately complex, more perfectly compact and thoroughly functional than the human eye?”

    “No, sir,” said August.

    “I thought not,” said Larchcroft. “Consider this, though. Our eyes were created by light. Without the existence of light, we would not have eyes. Over the long course of man’s evolutionarily maturation to his modern condition, light sculpted these magical orbs, making subtle adjustments through the centuries, until now they are capable of the incredible process of sight. This most vital sense, not only a means of self-preservation but the single most important catalyst for culture, is a product of the inherent genius of light.”

    p. 190