Thomas M. Disch famous quotes

04-17-2025

Creativity is the ability to see relationships where none exist.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Creativity #Ability
Laughter is just a slowed down scream of terror.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Laughter #Scream #Terror
Poets are regarded as handicapped writers whose work must be treated with a tender condescension, such as one accords the athletic achievements of basketball players confined to wheelchairs.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Basketball #Player #Achievement
A predilection for genre fiction is symptomatic of a kind of arrested development.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Fiction #Development #Kind
The gods, after all, are only human, and once their rage has been placated they are perfectly capable of acts of mercy and grace.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Grace #Mercy #Rage
America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature, as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend we believe.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Art #Liars #Lying
Gene Wolfe has produced a work of art that can satisfy adult appetites and in which even the most fantastical elements register as poetry rather than as penny-whistle whimsy.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Art #Elements #Whimsy
Sameness is what marketers want us to want.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Want #Commerce #Marketers
Writers tend to consider distinction and originality as virtues, but they are anathema to publishers.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Writing #Originality #Virtue
Sometimes the whole world is mud luscious and puddle wonderful
-- Thomas M. Disch

#World #Mud #Puddles
For a lot of people, poetry tends to be dull. It's not read much. It takes a special kind of training and a lot of practice to read poetry with pleasure. It's like learning to like asparagus.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Practice #People #Training
Knowledge is devalued when it becomes too generally known
-- Thomas M. Disch
Though opposition is a hopeless task, acquiescence would be worse.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Acquiescence #Tasks #Would Be
Genius is an infinite capacity for pain.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Pain #Genius #Infinite
All children... feel a demonic sympathy with those things that cause disorder in the grown-up world.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Children #World #Causes
But the toaster was quite satisfied with itself, thank you. Though it knew from magazines that there were toasters who could toast four slices at a time, it didn't think that the master, who lived alone and seemed to have few friends, would have wanted a toaster of such institutional proportions. With toast, it's quality that matters, not quantity.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Thinking #Quality #Magazines
Here was a flower (the daisy reflected) strangely like itself and yet utterly unlike itself too. Such a paradox has often been the basis for the most impassioned love.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Flower #Paradox #Daisies
The forest stretched on seemingly forever with the most monotonous predictability, each tree just like the next - trunk, branches, leaves; trunk, branches, leaves. Of course a tree would have taken a different view of the matter. We all tend to see the way others are alike and how we differ, and it's probably just as well we do, since that prevents a great deal of confusion. But perhaps we should remind ourselves from time to time that ours is a very partial view, and that the world is full of a great deal more variety than we ever manage to take in.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Taken #Views #Confusion
It considered trying to explain their error to them, but what would be the use? They would only go away with hurt feelings. You can't always expect people, or squirrels, to be rational.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Hurt #Squirrels #Errors
The distances between the stars seem brief by contrast to the distances between each of us and his fellows.
-- Thomas M. Disch

#Stars #Loneliness #Distance

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