# Quote — Walter Tevis, Mockingbird

> But most of all, it seems to me now, has been the courage to know and to sense my feelings that has come, slowly, from the emotionally charged silent films at the old library at first and then later from the poems and novels and histories and biographies and how-to-do-it books that I have read. All of those books—even the dull and nearly incomprehensible ones—have made me understand more clearly what it means to be a human being. And I have learned from the sense of awe I at times develop when I feel in touch with the mind of another, long-dead person and know that I am not alone on this earth. There have been others who have felt as I feel and who have, at times, been able to say the unsayable.

- Author: [Walter Tevis](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis.md)
- Book: [Mockingbird](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird.md)
- Page: 256
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Walter_Tevis#Mockingbird_(1980)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird/but-most-of-all

## 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 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird/and-then-i-began.md)

> 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 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird/noticing-and-thinking.md)

> 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 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird/holy-bible-begins.md)