“Given the choice between fulfilling love and a washing machine, young people in the U.S. and the Soviet Union both chose the washing machine.”

“Normal is just a cycle on the washing machine.”

“Pass by the synthetic yarn department, then, with your nose in the air. Should a clerk come out with the remark that All Young Mothers In This Day and Age (why can't they save their breath and say "now"?) insist on a yarn which can be machine-washed and machine-dried, come back at her with the reply that one day, you suppose, they will develop a baby that can be machine-washed and -dried. ”

“Somewhere, in a distant land he barely knew the name of, people had stopped buying washing machines, and so his city had died.”

“What is an adventure? That depends on where you are starting from. Little girls in your country, they hide in the gap between the washing machine and the refrigerator and they make believe they are in the jungle, with green snakes and monkeys all around them. Me and my sister, we used to hide in a gap in the jungle, with green snakes and monkeys all around us, and make believe that we had a washing machine and a refrigerator. You live in a world of machines and you dream off things with beating hearts. We dream of machines, because we see where beating hearts have left us.”

“RAND scientists tried to tell their wives that the decision whether to buy or not to buy a washing machine was an 'optimization problem'.”