To Your Scattered Bodies Go

Quotes

1. Burton, though an infidel, made it his business to investigate thoroughly every religion. Know a man’s faith, and you knew at least half the man. Know his wife, and you knew the other half.

   p. 176

2. 

   Burton did not believe in miracles. Nothing happened that could not be explained by physical principles — if you knew all the facts.

   p. 172

3. 

   All the human beings I met were either sure that there would be no afterlife or else that they would get preferential treatment in the hereafter.

   p. 17

4. 

   His wife had held him in her arms as if she could keep death away from him.

   He had cried out, "My God, I am a dead man!"

   p. 1

5. 

   Burton sighed, laughed loudly, and said, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Another fairy tale to give men hope. The old religions have been discredited — although some refuse to face even that fact — so new ones must be invented.”

   p. 179

6. 

   In a frenzy, kicking his legs and moving his arms in a swimmer's breaststroke, he managed to fight toward the rod. The closer he got to it, the stronger the web of force became. He did not give up. If he did, he would be back where he had been and without enough strength to begin fighting again. It was not his nature to give up until all his strength had been expended.

   p. 4

7. 

   It was like no hell or heaven of which he had ever heard or read, and he had thought that he was acquainted with every theory of the afterlife.

   He had died. Now he was alive. He had scoffed all his life at a life-after-death. For once, he could not deny that he had been wrong. But there was no one present to say, "I told you so, you damned infidel!"

   Of all the millions, he alone was awake.

   p. 3

8. 

   The world took a shape which he could grasp, though he could not comprehend it. Above him, on both sides, below him, as far as he could see, bodies floated. They were arranged in vertical and horizontal rows. The up-and-down ranks were separated by red rods, slender as broomsticks, one of which was twelve inches from the feet of the sleepers and the other twelve inches from their heads. Each body was spaced about six feet from the body above and below and on each side.

   The rods came up from an abyss without bottom and soared into an abyss without ceiling. That grayness into which the rods and the bodies, up and down, right and left, disappeared was neither the sky nor the earth. There was nothing in the distance except the lackluster of infinity.

   p. 3

9. 

   Death, the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Society, had arrived at last.

   Blackness. Nothingness. He did not even know that his heart had given out forever. Nothingness.

   Then his eyes opened. His heart was beating strongly. He was strong, very strong! All the pain of the gout in his feet, the agony in his liver, the torture in his heart, all were gone.

   It was so quiet he could hear the blood moving in his head. He was alone in a world of soundlessness.

   A bright light of equal intensity was everywhere. He could see, yet he did not understand what he was seeing. What were these things above, beside, below him? Where was he?

   p. 1

10. 

    The aerial canoe had no visible means of support, he thought, and it was a measure of his terror that he did not even think about his pun. No visible means of support. Like a magical vessel out of The Thousand and One Nights.

    p. 5

11. 

    “I did it!” she said. “I...I! I wanted to! Oh, what a vile low whore I am!”

    “I don’t remember offering you any money.”

    p. 54

That’s all the quotes.

11 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more