Quotes by Dexter Palmer, The Dream of Perpetual Motion

“But space shrinks when you get old, and things lose their wonder, and the wisest thing to do then is to try your best to sleep.”

“It is like reading two books, one with each eye, and understanding them both.”

“This had been happening more and more often: the two of us come upon each other by accident in the early hours of the morning and take solace in each others' company, weathering out the peril of be...”

“Perhaps my gift to you will be as simple as a single word, whispered into your ear by one of your servants as you lie on your deathbed, a word that solves a final mystery and makes it easy for you ...”

“Love, no matter how high or low its form, must be requited, or the lover suffers.”

“But I was not good enough. You should understand this about meI am not a hero; not one to tap unknown reserves of courage; not one to rise to circumstance. I am the understudy who chokes on his lin...”

“I ask you to kill my father for the crime of bringing me into existence.”

“That friend of hers has got to go, though. You're lucky you got stuck with that Dexter guy instead of”

“The constant clamor of the booths and barkers served as an exhausting reminder that he had to choose a fate, and that no matter which fate he chose he could be certain that it would not be the best...”

“For with each bite he tasted not just the irresistible sweetness of the dessert, but the deliciously agonizing negative flavor of all the imagined foodstuffs that he could have bought with that nic...”

“For instance, the cards that I wrote for the company's 'I'd Like to Declare My Confused and Ambiguous Fondness for You' line were all notorious failures, some of which were blamed as the single dir...”

“We want all possible things made actual, the perpetual possibility of perfection, the best of all futures all at once.”

“He falls asleep believing he's been robbed, not knowing that the summoning of demons is almost always unwitting.”

“This is why it's good manners to give gifts in wrappers: so that, for a moment, that beast in all of us that makes us feel alive and keeps us from becoming angels can be satisfied. While a gift is ...”

“Soft hearts provide poor harbor; tin hearts can better stand against time and bad weather, thin and hollow as they are. So you pray to change from flesh to metal, and the dying Author of the world ...”

“If the future changed, and the time traveler we're talking about was from that future, and was the product of events that created that future, why wouldn't the time traveler also change when those ...”

“In the moment when he died at my hand he had his own heart's desire—not the actual future, but a hope for the best possible future, one that he could not himself imagine.”

“But I was not good enough. You should understand this about me—I am not a hero; not one to tap unknown reserves of courage; not one to rise to circumstance. I am the understudy who chokes on his li...”