Thomas M. Disch Quotes

19 quotes in 322 categories

• For a lot of people, poetry tends to be dull. It's not read much. It takes a special kind of training and a lot of…
• Sometimes the whole world is mud luscious and puddle wonderful
• Poets are regarded as handicapped writers whose work must be treated with a tender condescension, such as one accords the athletic achievements of basketball players…
• A predilection for genre fiction is symptomatic of a kind of arrested development.
• The gods, after all, are only human, and once their rage has been placated they are perfectly capable of acts of mercy and grace.
• America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature, as the art form…
• Creativity is the ability to see relationships where none exist.
• Gene Wolfe has produced a work of art that can satisfy adult appetites and in which even the most fantastical elements register as poetry rather…
• Sameness is what marketers want us to want.
• Writers tend to consider distinction and originality as virtues, but they are anathema to publishers.
• Laughter is just a slowed down scream of terror.
• Knowledge is devalued when it becomes too generally known
• Though opposition is a hopeless task, acquiescence would be worse.
• Genius is an infinite capacity for pain.
• All children... feel a demonic sympathy with those things that cause disorder in the grown-up world.
• But the toaster was quite satisfied with itself, thank you. Though it knew from magazines that there were toasters who could toast four slices at…
• Here was a flower (the daisy reflected) strangely like itself and yet utterly unlike itself too. Such a paradox has often been the basis for…
• The forest stretched on seemingly forever with the most monotonous predictability, each tree just like the next - trunk, branches, leaves; trunk, branches, leaves. Of…
• It considered trying to explain their error to them, but what would be the use? They would only go away with hurt feelings. You can't…

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