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Thomas M. Disch Quotes

Thomas Michael Disch was an American science fiction author and poet. He won the Hugo Award for Best Related Book – previously called "Best Non-Fiction Book" – in 1999, and he had two other Hugo nominations and nine Nebula Award nominations to his credit, plus one win of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, a Rhysling Award, and two Seiun Awards, among others.

In the 1960s, his work began appearing in science-fiction magazines. His critically acclaimed science fiction novels, The Genocides, Camp Concentration and 334 are major contributions to the New Wave science fiction movement. In 1996, his book The Castle of Indolence: On Poetry, Poets, and Poetasters was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and in 1999, Disch won the Nonfiction Hugo for The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, a meditation on the impact of science fiction on our culture, as well as the Michael Braude Award for Light Verse. Among his other nonfiction work, he wrote theatre and opera criticism for The New York Times, The Nation, and other periodicals. He published several volumes of poetry as Tom Disch.

Following an extended period of depression following the death in 2005 of his life-partner, Charles Naylor, Disch stopped writing almost entirely, except for poetry and blog entries – although he did produce two novellas. Disch killed himself by gunshot on July 4, 2008 in his apartment in Manhattan, New York City. Naylor and Disch are buried alongside each other at Saint Johns Episcopal Church Columbarium, Dubuque, Iowa. His last book, The Word of God, which was written shortly before Naylor died, had just been published a few days before Disch's death. Wikipedia  

✵ 2. February 1940 – 4. July 2008   •   Other names توماس م. دیسچ, תומאס מ' דיש, Томас Діш
Thomas M. Disch photo
Thomas M. Disch: 10   quotes 0   likes

Famous Thomas M. Disch Quotes

“Boz, who had no patience with Science, always confused north and south.”

Thomas M. Disch

Emancipation: A Romance of the Times to Come (1971)

“Religious faith often finds itself at odds with story-telling. Puritans ban acting companies. Islam is uneasy about all forms of representation. And why? Because the experience of walking out of the theater after a performance is a paradigm of disillusionment, and religious people are officially supposed to believe, first and foremost, in their own literal faith, from which there are no exits. They've taken the big leap, and live, ever after, in free fall.”

Thomas M. Disch

Introduction to "The Santa Claus Compromise".
The Man Who Had No Idea (and other stories) (1982)

“The gods, after all, are only human, and once their rage has been placated they are perfectly capable of acts of mercy and grace.”

Thomas M. Disch

"The Vengeance of Hera".
The Man Who Had No Idea (and other stories) (1982)

“Jobs are like going to church: it’s nice once or twice a year to sing along and eat something and all that, but unless you really believe there’s something holy going on, it gets to be a drag going in every single week.”

Thomas M. Disch

Emancipation: A Romance of the Times to Come (1971)

“All the things that happen and seem so important at the time, and yet you forget them, one after another.”

Thomas M. Disch

Emancipation: A Romance of the Times to Come (1971)

“He especially liked ads for shampoos and hair coloring. The women in them seemed to regard their hair as independent, capricious entities, whom they must placate and provide with food.”

Thomas M. Disch

"The Black Cat".
The Man Who Had No Idea (and other stories) (1982)

Thomas M. Disch Quotes

“…there, strung out under the cornice of the building, was the motto, which he had never noticed before, of the Federal Communications Agency:
PLANNED FREEDOM IS THE ROAD TO
LASTING PROGRESS.
So simple, so direct, and yet, when you thought about it, almost impossible to understand.”

Thomas M. Disch

"The Man Who Had No Idea".
The Man Who Had No Idea (and other stories) (1982)

Communication , Understanding , Freedom

“Marvin Kolodny responded with a boyish grin and offered his hand. An American flag has been tattooed on his right forearm. On a scroll circling the flagpole was the following inscription:
Let's All
Overthrow
the United States
Government
by Force &
Violence”

Thomas M. Disch

"The Man Who Had No Idea" (originally published 1978).
The Man Who Had No Idea (and other stories) (1982)

Tattoo

“There was nothing like shared meals, so the experts at IBM claimed, for overcoming one's basic disbelief in the existence of other people.”

Thomas M. Disch

"Concepts".
The Man Who Had No Idea (and other stories) (1982)

People

“The way we work, the way we talk, the way we watch television or walk down the street, even the way we fuck, or maybe that especially—each of those is part of the problem of identity. We can’t do any of those things authentically until we find out who we really are and be that person, inside and out, instead of the person other people want us to be. Usually those other people, if they want us to be something we aren’t, are using us as a laboratory for working out their own identity problems.”

Thomas M. Disch

Emancipation: A Romance of the Times to Come (1971)

Personality , People , Problem , Way

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