“How old is the Universe? It is one half-second old, but the half-second has lasted one quintillion years so far.”
Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Context: I was on par with the Creator of the Universe there in the dark in the cocktail lounge. I shrunk the Universe to a ball exactly one light-year in diameter. I had it explode. I had it disperse itself again.
Ask me a question, any question. How old is the Universe? It is one half-second old, but the half-second has lasted one quintillion years so far. Who created it? Nobody created it. It has always been here.
What is time? It is a serpent which eats its tail, like this:
This is the snake which uncoiled itself long enough to offer Eve the apple, which looked like this:
What was the apple which Eve and Adam ate? It was the Creator of the Universe.
And so on.
Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.
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Kurt Vonnegut 318
American writer 1922–2007Related quotes
“I began drawing when I was one and a half years old. I never stopped.”
Vetulani.nl (The website of Tomasz Vetulani) https://web.archive.org/web/20220505120930/https://www.vetulani.nl/, archived from the original https://www.vetulani.nl/ (accessed on May 5th, 2022)
“But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.”
The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
Context: p>So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.</p
As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 299
“One a child, one old / almost half a century apart // both / need my hand in this city”
Pretty Cool People interview (2007)
“What Franz Kafka was to the first half of the 20th century, Philip K. Dick is to the second half.”
As quoted in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick : Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (1995) edited by Lawrence Sutin, p. x.