[Mahmoud:]“Now take this one word: 'grok.' Its literal meaning, one which I suspect goes back to the origin of the Martian race as thinking, speaking creatures—and which throws light on their whole 'map'—is quite easy. 'Grok' means 'to drink.'”

“Huh?” said Jubal. “But Mike never says 'grok' when he's just talking about drinking. He-”

“Just a moment.” Mahmoud spoke to Mike in Martian.

Mike looked faintly surprised and said, “'Grok' is drink,” and dropped the matter.

“But Mike would also have agreed,” Mahmoud went on, “if I had named a hundred other English words, words which represent what we think of as different concepts, even pairs of antithetical concepts. And 'grok' means all of these, depending on how you use it. It means 'fear,' it means 'love,' it means 'hate'—proper hate, for by the Martian 'map' you cannot possibly hate anything unless you grok it completely, understand it so thoroughly that you merge with it and it merges with you—then and only then can you hate it. By hating yourself. But this also implies, by necessity, that you love it, too, and cherish it and would not have it otherwise. Then you can hate—and (I think) that Martian hate is an emotion so black that the nearest human equivalent could only be called a mild distaste.”

Mahmoud screwed up his face. “It means 'identically equal' in the mathematical sense. The human cliché, 'This hurts me worse than it does you' has a Martian flavor to it, if only a trace. The Martians seem to know instinctively what we learned painfully from modern physics, that the observer interacts with the observed simply through the process of observation. 'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the process being observed—to merge, to blend, to intermarry, to lose personal identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us as color means to a blind man.” Mahmoud paused. “Jubal, if I chopped you up and made a Stew of you, you and the stew, whatever else was in it, would grok—and when I ate you, we would grok together and nothing would be lost and it would not matter which one of us did the chopping up and eating.”

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Some men use hens as a sexual object, inserting their penis into the cloaca, an all-purpose channel for wastes and for the passage of the egg. This is usually fatal to the hen, and in some cases she will be deliberately decapitated just before ejaculation in order to intensify the convulsions of its sphincter. This is cruelty, clear and simple.

EMILIA: 'Tis not a year or two shows us a man.
They are all but stomachs and we all but food;
They eat us hungerly, and when they are full
They devour us.

Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there's the superhero and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spiderman is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spiderman.

And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red “S”—that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes.

What Kent wears—the glasses, the bussiness suit—that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He's weak, he's unsure of himself, he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race.

Preamble to the instructions on how to wind a watch

Think of this: when they present you with a watch, they are gifting you with a tiny flowering hell, a wreath of roses, a dungeon of air. They aren't simply wishing the watch on you, and many more, and we hope it will last you, it's a good brand, Swiss, with anchored rubies; they aren't just giving you this minute stonecutter which will bind you by the wrist and walk along with you. They are giving you —they don't know it, what's terrible is that they don't know it— they are gifting you with a new fragile and precarious piece of yourself, something that's yours but not a part of your body, that you have to strap to your body like your belt, like a tiny, furious bit of something hanging onto your wrist. They gift you with the job of having to wind it every day, an obligation to wind it, so that it goes on being a watch, they gift you with the obsession of looking into jewelry-shop windows to check the exact time, check the radio announcer, check the telephone service. They give you the fear of losing it, of someone stealing it from you, of it falling on the street and getting broken. They give you the gift of its trademark and the assurance that it's a trademark better than others, they gift you with the impulse to compare your watch with other watches. They aren't giving you a watch, you are the gift, they are giving you yourself for the watch's birthday.

Instructions on how to wind a watch

There at the end is death, but don't be afraid. Hold the watch tight with one hand, take the stem with two fingers, and rotate it smoothly. Now another installment of time opens, trees spread their leaves, boats run races, like a fan time continues filling with itself, and from it the eruption of air, the breezes of the earth, the shadow of a woman, the sweet smell of bread.

What did you expect, what more do you want? Quickly strap it to your wrist, let it throb away in freedom, imitate it longingly. Fear rusts the escapements, everything that could have happened and was forgotten corrodes the watch's veins, cankering the cold blood of its tiny rubies. And there at the end is death, if we do not run and arrive beforehand and understand that it no longer matters.

In truth, the Library includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted by the twenty-five orthographical symbols, but not a single example of absolute nonsense. It is useless to observe that the best volume of the many hexagons under my administration is entitled The Combed Thunderclap and another The Plaster Cramp and another Axaxaxas mlö. These phrases, at first glance incoherent, can no doubt be justified in a cryptographical or allegorical manner; such a justification is verbal and, ex hypothesi, already figures in the Library. I cannot combine some characters

dhcmrlchtdj

which the divine Library has not foreseen and which in one of its secret tongues do not contain a terrible meaning. No one can articulate a syllable which is not filled with tenderness and fear, which is not, in one of these languages, the powerful name of a god. To speak is to fall into tautology. This wordy and useless epistle already exists in one of the thirty volumes of the five shelves of one of the innumerable hexagons — and its refutation as well. (An n number of possible languages use the same vocabulary; in some of them, the symbol library allows the correct definition: an ubiquitous and lasting system of hexagonal galleries, but library is bread or pyramid or anything else, and these seven words which define it have another value. You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?)

One day honey, one day onions.

Beneath its purple pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and unclean. What did it matter? No one could see it. He himself would not see it. Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul? He kept his youth—that was enough. And, besides, might not his nature grow finer, after all? There was no reason that the future should be so full of shame. Some love might come across his life, and purify him, and shield him from those sins that seemed to be already stirring in spirit and in flesh—those curious unpictured sins whose very mystery lent them their subtlety and their charm. Perhaps, some day, the cruel look would have passed away from the scarlet sensitive mouth, and he might show to the world Basil Hallward's masterpiece.

No; that was impossible. Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon the canvas was growing old. It might escape the hideousness of sin, but the hideousness of age was in store for it. The cheeks would become hollow or flaccid. Yellow crow's feet would creep round the fading eyes and make them horrible. The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth would gape or droop, would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old men are. There would be the wrinkled throat, the cold, blue-veined hands, the twisted body, that he remembered in the grandfather who had been so stern to him in his boyhood. The picture had to be concealed. There was no help for it.

If I'm asked for a memory, it would be a childhood memory; and the most memory of all, since it is in itself like a metaphor of memory, brings to the soul a pungent lemon smell. I was probably six years then. […] They used to buy me those minute volumes of the Pulga Library, in which I stumbled for the first time upon so many literary friends that have been with me since. One that especially marked me was The Gold Bug, by Edgar Allan Poe. […] There I learned about the first pirate treasure of my life, that of captain Kidd.

[…]

But above all The Gold Bug brought me the wonderful gift of sympathetic ink, invisible at normal conditions until its strokes reappear with the heat of a flame. The formula for sympathetic ink provided by Poe did not suit me, for it includes such enigmatic ingredients as: “zaffre, digested in aqua regia”(?) and “regulus of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre”(??). But someone, perhaps my father or grandfather Antonio, told me of a combination more within my reach: eggwhites and lemon juice. I got my mother, the cook, the nanny and everyone in the kitchen working until I got in a little cup some of this enchanted mixture. I can still see it golden and sour, I can still smell it. With the school nib, dipping it carefully in the cup, I began writing I don't know what on a white sheet. Afterwards I brought a match near the sheet, in which you could barely make some stains of pale humidity: slowly, blurrily and brown, rose the hidden letters. They were incomprehensible, as if run by the tears of all my future cryings, but they appeared from nothing at the unsteady call of a lighted match. I think no other marvel of nature has astonished me this much. The experiment had such a chilling success that I didn't dare to repeat it…

I can't remember the message I wrote in that sheet, only the long chicken scratch of those letters coming out of nowhere. So this is sympathetic ink, I thought. Sympathetic ink, with which men's memory is written even after the death of the last pirate! I couldn't know it then, of course, but I do now. Everything that happens and even what does not happens, what does not dare or manages to happen, is written within us with sympathetic ink, invisible to the naked eye at normal temperature. But later, when least expected, some intimate warmth approaches the hidden inscription and it becomes again clear: dark and shaky, bathed in tears.

I don't take drugs as an escape trick, like some cheap magician on a cruise ship. I take drugs to find gold, like a greedy prospector in the backcountry. There are those who take drugs to be cool and those who take drugs to expand. I am not James Dean. I'm a balloon. And god has a mouth on my hole. And is blowing. And filling me up. And filling me up. One day I will explode. And then I will be free.

[Jane Smith:]“There's just this huge space between us, and it just keeps filling up with everything we don't say to each other. What's that called?”

[Counselor:]“Marriage.”

Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

There's a hell of a difference between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is just calisthenics with words.

Alvy Singer: I thought of that old joke, y'know, the, this, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, uh, my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken.” And, uh, the doctor says, “Well, why don't you turn him in?” And the guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.” Well, I guess that's pretty much how I feel about relationships. Y'know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and, but, uh, I guess we keep going through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs.

The fucking cops are fucking keen
To fucking keep it fucking clean
The fucking chief's a fucking swine
Who fucking draws a fucking line
At fucking fun and fucking games
The fucking kids he fucking blames
Are nowehere to be fucking found
Anywhere in chicken town

The fucking scene is fucking sad
The fucking news is fucking bad
The fucking weed is fucking turf
The fucking speed is fucking surf
The fucking folks are fucking daft
Don't make me fucking laugh
It fucking hurts to look around
Everywhere in chicken town

The fucking train is fucking late
You fucking wait you fucking wait
You're fucking lost and fucking found
Stuck in fucking chicken town

The fucking view is fucking vile
For fucking miles and fucking miles
The fucking babies fucking cry
The fucking flowers fucking die
The fucking food is fucking muck
The fucking drains are fucking fucked
The colour scheme is fucking brown
Everywhere in chicken town

The fucking pubs are fucking dull
The fucking clubs are fucking full
Of fucking girls and fucking guys
With fucking murder in their eyes
A fucking bloke is fucking stabbed
Waiting for a fucking cab
You fucking stay at fucking home
The fucking neighbors fucking moan
Keep the fucking racket down
This is fucking chicken town

The fucking train is fucking late
You fucking wait you fucking wait
You're fucking lost and fucking found
Stuck in fucking chicken town

The fucking pies are fucking old
The fucking chips are fucking cold
The fucking beer is fucking flat
The fucking flats have fucking rats
The fucking clocks are fucking wrong
The fucking days are fucking long
It fucking gets you fucking down
Evidently chicken town

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows.

But why same more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.