Walter Tevis Quotes & Sayings

The strange thing about television is that it doesn't tell you everything. — Walter Tevis

When the bottles hit they tinkled and jangled noisily; but Eddie did not hear them because of the overriding - yet distant, detached, far-off - sound of his own screaming. — Walter Tevis

New York is nearly a grave. The Empire State Building is its gravestone. — Walter Tevis

everywhere alone. — Walter Tevis

To love the game itself is a fine thing; it is loving the art you live by. — Walter Tevis

In meeting Betty Jo he had learned that there was a large substratum of society that was totally unaffected by this middle-class prototype, that a huge and indifferent mass of persons had virtually no ambitions and no values whatever. — Walter Tevis

The house was an immense place, isolated in a great wooded area. The building and the trees seemed wet, glistening dimly in the grey morning light that was much like the light of midday of Anthea. It was refreshing to his over-sensitive eyes. He liked the woods, the quiet sense of life in them, and the glistening moisture - the sense of water and of fruitfulness that this earth overflowed with, even down to the continual trilling and chirping sounds of the insects. It would be an endless source of delight compared to his own world, with the dryness, the emptiness, the soundlessness of the broad, empty deserts between the almost deserted cities where the only sound was the whining of the cold and endless wind that voiced the agony of his own, dying people..... — Walter Tevis

The Age of Technology has rusted. — Walter Tevis

it was the meaning of more than the game of pool, more than the five-by-ten-foot microcosm of ambition and desire. It seemed to him as if all men must know this because it is in every meeting and every act, in the whole gigantic hustle of men's lives. — Walter Tevis

Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods. — Walter Tevis

Did they ruin your mind when they ruined your eyes, Mr Newton?' Newton — Walter Tevis

Reading is the subtle and thorough sharing of the ideas and feelings by underhanded means. It is a gross invasion of Privacy and a direct violation of the Constitutions of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Age. The Teaching of Reading is equally a crime against Privacy and Personhood. One to five years on each count. — Walter Tevis

When literacy died, so had history. — Walter Tevis

They were willing to accept their stringent piety, and silence, and sexual restraints, all unthinkingly, along with a few platitudes about Jesus and Moses and Noah; they were overwhelmed, however, at the effort it would require to understand the literature that was the real source of their religion. I — Walter Tevis

You drop that load too when you find yourself an excuse. Then, afterward, all you got to do is learn to feel sorry for yourself - and lots of people learn to get their kicks that way. It's one of the best indoor sports, feeling sorry." Bert's face broke into an active grin. "A sport enjoyed by all. Especially the born losers. — Walter Tevis

and I live alone everywhere. Altogether — Walter Tevis

If I cannot read and learn and have things that are worth thinking about, I would rather immolate myself than go on living. Synthetic — Walter Tevis

I feel free and strong. If I were not a reader of books I could not feel this way. — Walter Tevis

It all began, I suppose, with learning to build fires - to warm the cave and keep the predators out. And it ended with time-release Valium. — Walter Tevis

I am human. I talk and I listen and I read. — Walter Tevis

Do you realize that you will not only wreck your civilization, such as it is, and kill most of your people; but that you will also poison the fish in your rivers, the squirrels in your trees, the flocks of birds, the soil, the water? There are times when you seem, to us, like apes loose in a museum, carrying knives, slashing the canvases, breaking the statuary with hammers. — Walter Tevis

Outside the moon had come out. It was full, a disk of bright silver. I saw a large, dramatic spider web on my back porch that must have been made while I was in the house with my mind in turmoil; the spider was just finishing the outer circle of it. The moon illuminated the strands of the big taut web so that it seemed to be made of pure light. It was dazzling, geometric and mysterious, and it calmed me just to stop and look at it, at the elaboration and power of life that could make such a design. — Walter Tevis

And winning; that can be heavy on your back, too, like a monkey. You drop that load too when you find yourself an excuse."
...
And Bert seemed to relax, knowing he had scored, had pushed his way through Eddie's consciousness and through his defenses, although Eddie still only partly understood all of what Bert had said, and was already prepared to rationalize the truth out of what he did understand. But Bert had suddenly quit pushing, and seemed now to be merely relaxing with his drink. "That's your problem," he said. — Walter Tevis

Reading is too intimate,' Spofforth said. 'It will put you too close to the feelings and ideas of others. It will disturb and confuse you. — Walter Tevis