Hitherto man had to live with the idea of death as an individual; from now onward mankind will have to live with the idea of its death as a species.

The Régime did not want Communists; it wanted robots. It will take at least a generation to change them back into humans again.

Coincidence may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated causal chains which-miraculously, it seems-merge into a significant event. It provides the neatest paradigm of the bisociation of previously separate contexts, engineered by fate. Coincidences are puns of destiny. In the pun, two strings of thought are tangled into one acoustic knot; in the coincidental happening, two strings of events are knitted together by invisible hands.

One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions.

In the pun, two strings of thought are tangled into one acoustic knot.

We know that virtue does not matter to history, and that crimes remain unpunished; but that every error had its consequences and venges itself unto the seventh generation.

To want to meet an author because you like his books is as ridiculous as wanting to meet the goose because you like pate de foie gras.