"Whenever you read a good book, it's like the author is right there, in the room, talking to you, which is why I don't like to read good books."

i've started dogearing the books i read, and writing down my favorite lines. these are some of the bits i liked most...

TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person. (4)

But the tiger you see madly pacing its cage is nevertheless preoccupied with something that a human would certainly recognize as a thought. And this thought is a question: Why? "Why, why, why, why, why, why?" the tiger asks itself hour after hour, day after day, year after year, as it treads its endless path behind the bars of its cage. It cannot analyze the question or elaborate on it. If you were somehow able to ask the creature, "Why what? it would be unable to answer you. Nevertheless this question burns like an unquenchable flame in its mind, inflicting a searing pain that does not diminish until the creature lapses into a final lethargy that zookeepers recognize as an irreversible rejection of life. (11)

Man's place is to be the first. Man's place is to be the first without being the last. (242)

All this -- all your triumphs and tragedies, all your marvels and miseries -- are a direct result of…what? (74)

I'm saying that the price you've paid is not the price of becoming human. It's not even the price of having the things you just mentioned. It's the price of enacting a story that casts mankind as the enemy of the world. (75)

Has anyone ever said, 'Well, we have certain knowledge about all these other things, why don't we see if any such knowledge can be found about how to live?' Has anyone ever done that?
     I doubt it. (88)

That's one expression of the law. Here's another: "The world was not made for any one species." (145)

But if he should eat of the tree of our knowledge, then he will shrug off his weariness. He will say, 'What does it matter that I'm weary of living as a murderer of all the life around me? I know good and evil, and this way of living is good. Therefore I must live this way even though I'm weary unto death, even though I destroy the world and even myself.' (163)

It would mean spitting out the fruit of that tree and giving the rule of the world back to the gods. (168)

He's the trailblazer, the pathfinder. His destiny is to be the first to learn that creatures like man have a choice: They can try to thward the gods and perish in the attempt -- or they can stand aside and make some room for all the rest. But it's more than that. His destiny is to be the father of them all -- I don't mean by direct descent. By giving all the rest their chance. (242)