But although I had watched television in the same way many times in my life before, I found I could no longer… — Walter Tevis
But although I had watched television in the same way many times in my life before, I found I could no longer watch it and not think. “Give yourself to the Screen,” they had taught us. It was as basic as “Don’t ask; relax.” But I could no longer give myself to it. I no longer wanted to keep my mind silent, or use it as a vehicle for disconnected pleasure; I wanted to read, and think, and talk.
p. 229Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
And then I began to feel it, the whole enormous scope of it, in what had begun in some dark antiquity of trees and caves and the plains of Africa; of human life, erect and ape-like, spreading itself everywhere and building first its idols and then its cities. And then dwindling to a drugged trace, a remnant, because of a failed machine. A tiny part of a failed machine. And a more-than-human robot that would not try to repair it.
p. 239
Noticing and thinking are sometimes a strain and a bafflement and I wonder if the Designers were aware of that when they made it almost impossible for the ordinary citizen to make use of a recorder. Or when they had us all taught that earliest learned wisdom: “When in doubt, forget it.”
p. 22
Holy Bible begins: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” It does not give the century of the “beginning,” nor is it clear who “God” is, or was. I am not certain whether Holy Bible is a book of history or maintenance or poetry. It names many strange people who do not seem real.
p. 140
