Fantes det ikke noe filtreringssystem? Kan den enkelt låner avgjøre om en bok skal i flammene? – Med sorg å melde, ja, sa Per Bleken. Det er en del av regjeringens utfasing av litteraturen, dette også; en forlengelse av at kulturministeren i 2016 uttalte at det må bli slutt på at noen forteller oss hva som er god og dårlig kultur. Så nå er det folket selv som avgjør.

– Altså, det var jo egentlig en fillesak, og spør du meg, er denne politianmeldelsen for at du har stjålet nitten sjeldne bøker, også en fillesak; likevel kan jeg si deg det rett ut; jeg akter å bruke politianmeldelsen som oppsigelsesgrunn. Ikke for det; du har sannelig gjort mye godt arbeid i løpet av dine år her, uten tvil, arkivet, de ulike samlingene, jo, men du har ikke vært villig til å delta i den nye tid. Bøker er på vei ut. Inn kommer interaktive måte å forholde seg til kulturen på. Spill. Hvem orker å lese om greske helter når man kan spille dem i HD? Hvorfor lese Shakespeare, når man kan kle seg ut, virtuelt, som Julius Cæsar, og befinne seg med hud og hår i Roma, 44 år før Kristus?

A seventeen-year-old boy (I'd be eighteen in March) tooling across Mulholland in a convertible Mercedes dressed in a private-school uniform and wearing Wayfares is an image from a certain moment of empire that I was, at times, self-conscious about—did I look like an asshole? I'd briefly wonder—before thinking: I look so cool I don't care.

And the prince-of-darkness literary persona readers thought I had always embodied was now vanishing, being replaced by something sunnier—the man who wrote American Psycho was actually, some people were surprised to find out, just an amiable mess, maybe even likable, and not nearly the careless nihilist so many people mistook me for, an image that I perhaps played along with anyway.

Husserl I fell in love with. He was a mathematician, so I trusted him. He was professor at Freiburg and he took in a young student named Martin Heidegger and was his teacher and his mentor and then the Nazis came and they said that Husserl would have to be dismissed because he was a Jew and Heidegger said why yes, that was only right. And so Husserl cleared his desk and went home and sat and wept and then he died and Heidegger took over his chair. So the question that we’re left with I suppose is that if human decency does not represent something like the foundation of philosophical inquiry then what is its purpose?

One day the doctor came in. He didn't know who Gödel was—just some nutty professor from the university—and Oppenheimer told him to take good care of Gödel because he was the greatest logician since Aristotle. And the doctor nodded and began to edge toward the door and Oppenheimer realized that he was thinking: Good God, now there's two of them.

But anyone who doesnt understand that the Manhattan Project is one of the most significant events in human history hasnt been paying attention. It's up there with fire and language.

Det jeg ennå ikke visste, var at hånsordene og frykten skulle redde meg fra deg, fra landsbyen, fra å kopiere livet ditt. Jeg visste ennå ikke at ydmykelsene skulle tvinge meg til å bli fri.

Men det var svårt att hitta jobb här.
Särskilt för en amerikan.
Det är ingen som tar en amerikan seriöst.
De tycker att vi är en massa idioter.

If somebody calls somebody just a plain fuck it just means they left off the adjective?
Plain is an adjective.
Is Long John a son of a bitch?
No. He's too pathetic.
Is he a sick fuck?
Let me put it this way. If you look up sick fuck in the dictionary you'll find his picture.

Those who survived would often remember these horrors with a certain aesthetic to them. In the mycoidal phantom blooming in the dawn like an evil lotus and in the melting of solids not heretofore known to do so stood a truth that would silence poetry a thousand years. Like an immense bladder, they would say. Like some sea thing. Wobbling slightly on the near horizon. Then the unspeakable noise. They saw birds in the dawn sky ignite and explode soundlessly and fall in long arcs earthward like burning party favors.

What else? God. The man's a seducer of prelates and a suborner of the judiciary. He's an habitual mailcandler and a practicing gelignitionary, a mathematical platonist and a molester of domestic yardfowl. Principally of the dominecker persuasion. A chickenfucker, not to put too fine a point on it.

Rundt bena deres strøk den leverfargede katta, et utyske som alle på bruket hatet.

De to gnomene hadde åpenbart aldri hatt noe seksualliv, om enn muligens i forplantningsøyemed (etter hvert skulle det faktisk vise seg at de hadde avlet fram en sønn); de hørte rett og slett ikke til den delen av menneskeheten som har tilgang til seksualiteten. Likevel var de forarget og kritiserte paven mens de jamret seg over en AIDS-sykdom de aldri ville få anledning til å pådra seg; jeg hadde mest lyst til å dø, men jeg klarte å holde meg.

Jeg hadde aldri vært forelsket i noen før Isabelle, og ingen kvinne hadde vært forelsket i meg heller, bortsett fra Hengeræva, [...]

Det jeg syntes var mest sjokkerende på dette punktet i refleksjonen, var ikke at det fantes småjenter man kunne få for penger, men at det fantes småjenter man ikke kunne få for penger, eller bare til uoverkommelige priser; kort sagt ønsket jeg meg en bedre markedsregulering.

Når jeg tenkte på Nabokov, så jeg alltid for meg mislykket butterdeig.

David was immediately soothed by Nikki’s adept handling of people just out of the hospital. She had just the right passive quality, unlike me, who went pacing all around looking for a flat mirror and a razor blade.

I fell in love with Shawn more when he picked up the check for breakfast and insisted that it was all on him. That’s when I fell in love with him, I remember now perfectly.

I remember when I first started having lovers, they never failed to remind me that if I didn’t watch out, I’d get really fat (implying that I was painful enough to behold as it was). Then the Beatles came with their Jane Ashers and those Mary Quant clothes that you could only wear if you were ten years old and raised on English cabbage.