“That's what it means to die, to not be able to stop looking at whatever's in front of you. Some darn thing placed directly there, with nothing you can do about it...”

“Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood.”

“I mean, after all, you have to consider we're only made out of dust. That's admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn't forget that. But even considering, I mean it's sort of a bad beginning, we're not doing too bad. So I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with we can make it. You get me?”

“Do you have information that there's an android in the cast? I'd be glad to help you, and if I were an android would I be glad to help you?" "An android," he said, "doesn't care what happens to another android. That's one of the indications we look for." "Then," Miss Luft said, "you must be an android.”

“Grief reunites you with what you've lost. It's a merging; you go with the loved thing or person that's going away. You follow it a far as you can go.But finally,the grief goes away and you phase back into the world. Without him.And you can accept that. What the hell choice is there? You cry, you continue to cry, because you don't ever completely come back from where you went with him -- a fragment broken off your pulsing, pumping heart is there still. A cut that never heals.And if, when it happens to you over and over again in life, too much of your heart does finally go away, then you can't feel grief any more. And then you yourself are ready to die. You'll walk up the inclined ladder and someone else will remain behind grieving for you.”

“Sometimes I think this planet is under a spell," Elias said. "We are asleep or in a trance, and something causes us to see what it wants us to see and remember and think what it wants us to remember and think. Which means we're whatever it wants us to be. Which in turn means that we have no genuine existence. We're at the mercy of some kind of whim.”

“The first thing they do to you when you go into New-Path," Charles Freck said, "is they cut off your pecker. As an object lesson. And then they fan out in all directions from there.""Your spleen next," Barris said."They what, they cut -- What does that do, a spleen?""Helps you digest your food.""How?""By removing the cellulose from it.""Then I guess after that --""Just noncellulose foods. No leaves or alfalfa.""How long can you live that way?"Barris said, "It depends on your attitude.""How many spleens does the average person have?" He knew there usually were two kidneys."Depends on his weight and age.""Why?" Charles Freck felt keen suspicion."A person grows more spleens over the years. By the time he's eighty --""You're shitting me.”