The Illuminatus! Trilogy

"Satanists are creeps. They skin dogs alive and shit like that."

"Because most Satanists are Christians," said Joe. "Which is a very masochistic religion."

The commissar quoted an old Russian proverb which means, roughly, that when the polar bear excrement interferes with the fan belts, the machinery overheats.

He genuinely loved children and dogs, unless they were on the site of something that had to be bombed in the National Interest.

Love of country? Another lie; the truth is fear of cops and prisons. Love of art? Another lie; the truth is fear of the naked truth without ornaments and false faces on it. Love of truth itself? The biggest lie of all: fear of the unknown.

His emotion was as inexpressible, in normal terms, as that of a necrophile who had just broken into the town morgue.

"Thou hast no right but to do thy will.' The goose can break the bottle at any second. Socrates took the hemlock to prove it. Jesus went to the cross to prove it. It's in all history, all myth, all poetry. It's right out in the open all the time."

"I thought you were noncorporeal," said George.

"If you'd known me any length of time you would have noticed that I frequently pick my nose," said the Sartrelike apparition.

The face on the TV screen expressed absolute confidence, and many citizens felt a slight upsurge in hope; actually, he was totally around the bend on Demerol, and when the White House had burned earlier in the day his most constructive suggestion had been "Let's toast some marshmallows before we leave."

"If all are One," the fifth Illuminatus added significantly, "all violence is masochism.”

"If all are One," Brother Otto replied nastily, "all sex-is masturbation."

American anthropology is like virgins writing about sex.