“Stand near me and you get sick. Why? It reminds you that you’re an animal too, because you get a full dose of me. So we go round and round in our endless feedback. You hate me because you learn things about your own soul by getting near me. And I hate you because you must draw back from me. What I am, you see, is a plague carrier, and the plague I carry is the truth. My message is that it’s a lucky thing for humanity that we’re shut up each in his own skull. Because if we had even a little drop of telepathy, even the blurry nonverbal thing I’ve got, we’d be unable to stand each other. Human society would be impossible.”

— Robert Silverberg , book The Man in the Maze

Source: The Man in the Maze (1969), Chapter 8 (p. 120)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Robert Silverberg 88

American speculative fiction writer and editor 1935

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Obituary in New York Times

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Robert Silverberg 88

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