Thomas M. Disch Quotes

Sometimes the whole world is mud luscious and puddle wonderful

Creativity is the ability to see relationships where none exist.

The distances between the stars seem brief by contrast to the distances between each of us and his fellows.

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 practice to read poetry with pleasure. It's like learning to like asparagus.

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 than as penny-whistle whimsy.

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 always expect people, or squirrels, to be rational.

Genius is an infinite capacity for pain.

A predilection for genre fiction is symptomatic of a kind of arrested development.

Though opposition is a hopeless task, acquiescence would be worse.

Sameness is what marketers want us to want.

Creativeness is finding patterns where none exist.

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 most impassioned love.

Laughter is just a slowed down scream of terror.

Writers tend to consider distinction and originality as virtues, but they are anathema to publishers.

Knowledge is devalued when it becomes too generally known

Science Fiction is a branch of children's literature.

All children... feel a demonic sympathy with those things that cause disorder in the grown-up world.

The gods, after all, are only human, and once their rage has been placated they are perfectly capable of acts of mercy and grace.

Thought is a disease of the brain. The mind defends itself against the degenerative process of creativity; it begins to jell; notions solidify into inalterable systems.

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 confined to wheelchairs.

The toaster (lacking real bread) would pretend to make two crispy slices of toast. Or, if the day seemed special in some way, it would toast an imaginary English muffin.

Gender and the complications it gives rise to simply aren't relevant to the lives appliances lead.

In any case, muffins that are only imaginary aren't liable to get stuck.

Jesus loved crème brûlée, but even with crème brûlée enough isn't just enough, it can get to be too much.