Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 28
Context: Religion isn't invented by man. Men are invented by religion. Men invent responses to Quality, and among these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are. You know something and then the Quality stimulus hits and then you try to define the Quality stimulus, but to define it all you've got to work with is what you know. So your definition is made up of what you know. It's an analogue to what you already know. It has to be. It can't be anything else. And the mythos grows this way. By analogies to what is known before. The mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon analogues. These fill the collective consciousness of all communicating mankind. Every last bit of it. The Quality is the track that directs the train. What is outside the train, to either side—that is the terra incognita of the insane. He knew that to understand Quality he would have to leave the mythos. That's why he felt that slippage. He knew something was about to happen.
“"I don't really know what happened. I just fell out of the nest." But the second Soren said those words he felt a weird queasiness. He almost knew. He just couldn't quite remember, but he almost knew how it had happened, and he felt a mixture of dread and shame creep through him. He felt something terrible deep in his gizzard.”
Soren explaining to Gylfie how he got captured; Chapter Three: "Snatched!", p. 29
The Capture (2003)
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Kathryn Lasky 20
American children's writer 1944Related quotes
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Source: Clint: The Life and Legend (1999), p. 133.
Obituary http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-barry-bremen-20110707,0,2935425.story, LA Times, 2011-07-07
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Source: The Rag and Bone Shop (2000), p. 98