Цитаты из книги The Last Samurai

Кое-кто придерживается мнения, будто контрацепция аморальна, ибо цель совокупления - размножение. Кое-кто придерживается схожего мнения, будто единственная причина читать книгу - написать книгу; люди извлекают книги из праха и тьмы, пишут тысячи слов, которым предстоит кануть во прах и тьму, а затем их извлекут из праха и тьмы, дабы другие люди присовокупили свои тысячи слов к этим тысячам слов во прахе и тьме. Порой книгу извлекают из праха и тьмы, дабы породить книгу, которую потом станут продавать в магазинах, и она, быть может, окажется интересной, но люди, которые её купят и прочтут, поскольку она интересна, - это несерьёзные люди, а были бы серьёзными, наплевали бы на интересность, писали бы тысячи слов и затем поручили их праху и тьме.

One day you are lying on a bed in one of the motel rooms. Your mother is having a bad day: she is playing Chopin's Revolutionary Etude for the 63rd time on the piano in the adjacent room. Your father is having a good day: a member of the Gideon Society has come to suggest placing Bibles in the rooms, and he has been able to state categorically that he is not having that piece of trash in his motel. Each bedside table, he explains, has a copy of Darwin's Origin Of Species in the top drawer. In fact it's a really good day because that very morning one of the guests stole the Origin Of Species instead of a towel.

An American in Britain has sources of solace available nowhere else on earth. One of the marvelous things about the country is the multitudes of fried chicken franchises selling fried chicken from states not known for fried chicken on the other side of the Atlantic. If you're feeling a little depressed you can turn to Tennessee Fried Chicken, if you're in black despair an Iowa Fried Chicken will put things in perspective, if life seems worthless and death out of reach you can see if somewhere on the island an Alaska Fried Chicken is frying chicken according to a recipe passed down by the Inuit from time immemorial.

There are people who think contraception is immoral because the object of copulation is procreation. In a similar way there are people who think the only reason to read a book is to write a book; people should call up books from the dust and the dark and write thousands of words to be sent down to the dust and the dark which can be called up so that other people can send further thousands of words to join them in the dust and the dark. Sometimes a book can be called from the dust and the dark to produce a book which can be bought in shops, and perhaps it is interesting, but the people who buy it and read it because it is interesting are not serious people, if they were serious they would not care about the interest they would be writing thousands of words to consign to the dust and the dark. There are people who think death a fate worse than boredom.