Equinox (1973)
Context: Always remember the objects you are working with. When you make a bridge, remember you are putting steel on stone and dirt. … Some day you will write poems to a little girl: marks with ink on paper. … When you are making love, you are moving flesh against flesh. That is the basis of all magic. (p. 30)
Aphorisms
“But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”
“Man works for an object. Remove that object and you reduce him into inaction.”
"Indolence of the Filipino" in La Solidaridad (1890)
“If you remember the why, the how will work itself out.”
Source: Hunt for Jade Dragon
“Remember, the inevitable inefficiency of a huge bureaucracy will be working for you.”
Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 20 (p. 84)
Source: 2010s, 2011, The Missionary Position, Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice (2012)
Johnny Got His Gun (1938)
Context: Remember this well you people who plan for war. Remember this you patriots, you fierce ones, you spawners of hate, you inventors of slogans. Remember this as you have never remembered anything else in your lives. We are men of peace, we are men who work and we want no quarrel. But if you destroy our peace, if you take away our work, if you try to range us one against the other, we will know what to do. If you tell us to make the world safe for democracy we will take you seriously and by god and by Christ we will make it so. We will use the guns you force upon us, we will use them to defend our very lives, and the menace to our lives does not lie on the other side of a nomansland that was set apart without our consent it lies within our own boundaries here and now we have seen it and we know it.
Variant: Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. If you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.
