Pirsig Book Quotes & Sayings

Well," she said, "if I were the enemy commander, and our assault had failed three times, and I wanted to make a fourth, I don't think I'd attack with fewer men. But that's just me."
"Shut up, Loiosh."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Never mind. Private joke. — Steven Brust

The poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth. — Philip Sidney

A copy of Thoreau's Walden ... which Chris has never heard and which can be read a hundred times without exhaustion. I try always to pick a book far over his head and read it as a basis for questions and answers, rather than without interruption. I read a sentence or two, wait for him to come up with his usual barrage of questions, answer them, then read another sentence or two. Classics read well this way. They must be written this way. Sometimes we have spent a whole evening reading and talking and discovered we have only covered two or three pages. It's a form of reading done a century ago ... when Chautauquas were popular. Unless you've tried it you can't imagine how pleasant it is to do it this way. I — Robert M. Pirsig

I had to find meaning in it. So I go through this, I see all these homies die; I see all this terrible devastation, people sitting in prison. I've been saved from prison, from death, and from heroine addiction. What am I going to do with that? — Luis J. Rodriguez

Beliefs and definitions never clarify how Reality works -- they only distort perception of it. — Thomas Daniel Nehrer

When I think of my work, I'm aware that I'm American and African at all points and times. And without a doubt, my experience and understanding of America was shaped by having immigrant parents. — Dinaw Mengestu

I did not want to write one of those sequels that famous first-book authors get into where everybody says, 'Oh yeah.' — Robert M. Pirsig

A culture-bearing book, like a mule, bears the culture on its back. No one should sit down to write one deliberately. Culture-bearing books appear almost accidentally, like a sudden surge in the stock market. There are books of high quality that are a part of the culture, but that is not the same. They are a part of it. They aren't carrying it anywhere. They may talk about insanity sympathetically, for example, because that's the standard cultural attitude. But they don't carry any suggestion that insanity might be something other than sickness or degeneracy. — Robert M. Pirsig

If they were going to kill you, would they knock? — Jeffrey Eugenides

When I started out modeling, there weren't casting directors and there weren't stylists, so you just dealt directly with the designer. We were all much closer back then. — Naomi Campbell

I think we have to really focus on the issues much more than we may have in the past. I think we have to seek to create coalitional strategies that go beyond racial lines. We need to bring black communities, Chicano communities, Puerto Rican communities, Asian American communities together. — Angela Davis

The only consolation I can find in your immediate presence is your ultimate absence. — Shelagh Delaney

Up until my first book was published, I had all this potential, people would say, and I screwed up. After it, I could say: 'No, I didn't screw up.' — Robert M. Pirsig

This book offers another, more serious alternative to material success. It's not so much an alternative as an expansion of the meaning of "success" to something larger than just getting a good job and staying out of trouble. And also something larger than mere freedom. It gives a positive goal to work toward that does not confine. — Robert M. Pirsig