Hari Kunzru

“Driving was almost the only thing that felt natural in America. It was traditional. It was patriotic. When you accelerated, you could almost hear the crowd cheering you on.”

“She thought she was a feminist. She was only bad tempered.”

“Duhovna sloboda sveta direktno zavisi od politicke slobode Indije. Molimo Vas da stavite nesto sitinine u kasu.Posle tri cetvrti sata gubi svaku sigurnost, posle sat i po, sasvim je rastrojen. I dok prodju dva sata straze, njegove granice su se savsim istopile i on je potpuno izgubljen, ili mozda ne toliko izgubljen koliko razasut svuda po tami, okretanje njegovog sveta ima iznenadne zastoje i sada uopste nije siguran ni ko je, ni sta je, ni gde je ili cak da li uopste ima pravo da naziva sebe on.Dzonatan je naucio trik. Ljudi mare samo za spoljasnji izgled: sirinu manzetne, izgovor dentalno-labijalnog frikativa V. Da bi postao neko drugi treba samo da promenis krojaca i zapamtis da moras da dodirujes donjom usnom ivicu gornjih zuba. Lako je. Ali ako se promena lika ne desava spontano, onda noge gube oslonac i hvata te panika i onda nista ne moze zaustaviti pad. Onda je promena lika beg, onda je to trcanje uz saznanje da zaustavljanje moze izazvati sumnju da ustvari niko i ne trci. Niko ne trci. Niko se ne zaustavlja. Tu uopste i nema nikoga.Kako se coveculjak okrece, tako se pojavljuju razne licnosti jedna za drugom. Svaka pojava traje samo nekoliko sekundi, najvise minut. Svaka brise onu prethodnu. Ovaj covek postaje neko drugi tako potpuno da se nista od njegove sopstvene licnosti ne moze prepoznati. Izmedju svaka dva utiska koja coveculjak stvara, u trenutku dok jedna osoba odlazi, a druga jos nije stupila na njeno mesto, coveculjak, imitator-impresionista, sasvim je bezlican, potpuno prazan. On je niko.”

“What if one were to want to hunt for these hidden presences? You can’t just rummage around like you’re at a yard sale. You have to listen. You have to pay attention. There are certain things you can’t look at directly. You need to trick them into revealing themselves. That’s what we’re doing with Walter, Jaz. We’re juxtaposing things, listening for echoes. It’s not some silly cybernetic dream of command and control, modeling the whole world so you can predict the outcome. It’s certainly not a theory of everything. I don’t have a theory of any kind. What I have is far more profound.’‘What’s that?’‘A sense of humor.’Jaz looked at him, trying to find a clue in his gaunt face, in the clear gray eyes watching him with such - what? Amusement? Condescension? There was something about the man which brought on a sort of hermeneutic despair. He was a forest of signs.‘We’re hunting for jokes.’ Bachman spoke slowly, as if to a child. ‘Parapraxes. Cosmic slips of the tongue. They’re the key to the locked door. They’ll help us discover it.’‘Discover what?’‘The face of God. What else would we be looking for?”

“Legality is just the name for everything that's not dangerous for the ruling order.”

“There was, as she put it, nothing to stop me. So I followed the path of educated misfits through the ages and got a job in a bookshop.”

“Several times in my life I've gone through long periods without sex or any other kind of physical contact. The hunger it produces is deep and low; it's possible to lose track of it, to forget or fail to perceive how it's emptied everything out of you and made the world papery and thin. Touch starved, you brush against existence like a stick against dry leaves. You become insubstantial yourself, a hungry ghost.”

“These days Gaby was hearing that voice again, the one that told her to get out, to smash up all the emotional chairs and tables so there would be no going back, so she could tear down this version of herself and start again. ”