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The Dream Of Perpetual Motion Quotes

The Dream Of Perpetual Motion quote from classy quote

Two moral forces shaped how we think and live in this shining twentieth century: the Virgin, and the Dynamo. The Dynamo represents the desire to know; the Virgin represents the freedom not to know.What's the Virgin made of? Things that we think are silly, mostly. The peculiar logic of dreams, or the inexplicable stirring we feel when we look on someone that's beautiful not in a way that we all agree is beautiful, but the unique way in which a single person is. The Virgin is faith and mysticism; miracle and instinct; art and randomness.On the other hand, you have the Dynamo: the unstoppable engine. It finds the logic behind a seeming miracle and explains that miracle away; it finds the order in randomness to which we're blind; it takes the caliper to a young woman's head and quantifies her beauty in terms of pleasing mathematical ratios; it accounts for the secret stirring you felt by discoursing at length on the nervous systems of animals.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Art Dexter Palmer Dreams Miracles Science The Dream Of Perpetual Motion Twentieth Century

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

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Books Dexter Palmer Reading Simile The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

In fact, although I am not aware of it (and I am never aware of it, no matter how many times I have the dream) her suicide is a foregone conclusion. It is this way in dreams: when decisions are being made, they have already been made.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Decisions Dexter Palmer Dreams Foregone Conclusion Predetermined Recurring Dreams The Dream Of Perpetual Motion Unstoppable

Be the time he finds his way out of the chamber and the planetarium, he has become me.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Change Coming Of Age Dexter Palmer Life Changing Narrator The Dream Of Perpetual Motion Transformation

I have already lost the knowledge of the word whose sound has the shape of a soul. But perhaps it's not too late. Come with me. Hurry now. We still have a chance to be young.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Soul The Dream Of Perpetual Motion Young

And just as he said of me, the thing that his heart desired was not the thing that he professed to want.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Heart Heart S Desired The Dream Of Perpetual Motion Want

In the middle of all the world's incessant noise, her message was music, and music was a thing that I'd mostly lived my life without. In the ten years since I'd last seen Miranda she'd come to somehow stand in for all the things I didn't have in life that were thought to make us human, all the absent music and touch and sympathy; in my mind she lived a separate life apart from her real one, and there she grew more pure and perfect with each passing day . . . In my mind Miranda had become a miracle.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Fantasy Ideal Idealized Put On A Pedestal Symbol The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

Like most modern people, we no longer bothered to make the distinction between events in real life and the dramas of fictional worlds, and so the cliff-hanger that inevitably, reliably ended the hour held just as much or more importance to us as the newspaper that usually went from doorstep to garbage bin unread, and we speculated about the future lives of the characters that populated decayed mansions or desert isles as if they weren't inventions of other human minds.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Characters Dexter Palmer Fandom Fanfiction Fiction Headcanon Modern Culture News Reality Stories The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

Think of it. Going to sleep and waking up later in a science fiction future. It'll be fantastic. The shock and the wonder of it.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Cryogenically Frozen Dexter Palmer Future Science Fiction The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

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.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Future Heart S Desire The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

As an act of goodwill you must sacrifice all the futures you might have for the one that he designs for you.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Future Possibilities Sacrifice The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

The palimpsests of molecules need not be overwritten, for machines make once-ephemeral words persist: they collect in gutters; they pile up and require sweeping; they hang in air like morning fog.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Information Age Lasting Machines Modern Technology Palimpsest Permanent Simile The Dream Of Perpetual Motion Words

It is time to put down the pen; time to clear the throat. Speaking is a different thing altogether from writing. The spoken word has different properties, and different powers. If I have learned anything from writing down my own tale, it is this.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Language Narrator Speaking Spoken Word The Dream Of Perpetual Motion Words Writer Writing

At any other time it's better. You can do the things you feel you should; you're an expert at going through the motions. Your handshakes with strangers are firm and your gaze never wavers; you think of steel and diamonds when you stare. In monotone you repeat the legendary words of long-dead lovers to those you claim to love; you take them into bed with you, and you mimic the rhythmic motions you've read of in manuals. When protocol demands it you dutifully drop to your knees and pray to a god who no longer exists. But in this hour you must admit to yourself that this is not enough, that you are not good enough. And when you knock your fist against your chest you hear a hollow ringing echo, and all your thoughts are accompanied by the ticks of clockwork spinning behind your eyes, and everything you eat and drink has the aftertaste of rust.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Depression Dexter Palmer Dissatisfied Faking It Godless Going Through The Motions Meaningless Modern Society Not Good Enough The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

I truly do not know, and that unnameable feeling that comes with not knowing: it must be worse than grief. It must.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Emotions Feelings Grief Not Knowing The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

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 being awake at this time of night, when thoughts that are neatly ordered or justly murdered during the day come loose from their moorings and out of their graves, to tie themselves to each other in new and dangerous ways.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Early Morning Figurative Language Late Nights Metaphor Personification The Dream Of Perpetual Motion Thoughts

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

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Love Requited Suffering The Dream Of Perpetual Motion Unrequited Love

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 lines when he is forced onto the stage. I am never, ever good enough.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Cowardly Dexter Palmer Failure Hero Narrator Not Good Enough The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

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

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Artists Dexter Palmer Humor Meta The Dream Of Perpetual Motion Tongue In Cheek Writers

The machines of this place are failing, and the woman and I are here all alone. The perpetual motion engine, as brilliant and beautiful as it is, is running down—nothing lasts forever. But before this little world falls out of the sky there still might be time enough for redemption. There is still time for me to say the words that I should have had the courage to say at the beginning.There is still time, perhaps, for one more miracle.Hello, Miranda.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Beginning Bittersweet Dexter Palmer Ending Hello Impermanence Miracle Nothing Lasts Forever Perpetual Motion Poignant Redemption Sad Science Fiction Steampunk The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

Soon our culture's oldest dreams will be made real. Even the thought of sending a kind of flying craft to the moon is no longer nothing more than a child's fantasy. At this moment in the cities below us, the first mechanical men are being constructed that will have the capability to pilot the ship on its maiden voyage. But no one has asked if this dream we've had for so long will lose its value once it's realized. What will happen when those mechanical men step out of their ship and onto the surface of this moon, which has served humanity for thousands of years as our principal icon of love and madness? When they touch their hands to the ground and perform their relentless analyses and find no measurable miracles, but a dead gray world of rocks and dust? When they discover that it was the strength of millions of boyhood daydreams that kept the moon aloft, and that without them that murdered world will fall, spiraling slowly down and crashing into the open sea?

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Expectations Vs Reality Moon Landing Science Fiction Space Travel Steampunk The Dream Of Perpetual Motion The Moon

She is mad, and I am sane. To speak to her, even the first word, would be an acknowledgement and an acceptance of her madness, and from there I would have no choice but to follow her down the hole until both of us would be here alone in this ship among the clouds, endlessly circling the earth, our needs carefully ministered to by mechanical men, howling ourselves hoarse and counting off the ticks of the clock before the moon falls out of the sky.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Airship Dexter Palmer Madness Perpetual Motion Science Fiction Steampunk The Dream Of Perpetual Motion The Moon

Best, perhaps to keep one's nickels forever in one's pockets, to savor delicious possibility over mundane experience.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Anticipation Dexter Palmer Experience Possibility 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.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Aging Dexter Palmer Disillusioned Getting Old Growing Up Sad Sleep The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

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, that in other timelines rendered inaccessible with each spent coin, other versions of himself would be having more fun, or winning golden ribbons, or becoming taller. The thought was unbearable.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Choice Choices Dexter Palmer Overload Overwhelmed Possibilities The Dream Of Perpetual Motion Versions

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 to slip quietly into the dark.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Dying Gift Reassurance The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

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

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Crime Dexter Palmer Dramatic Father Murder The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

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 nickel instead—a turkey leg the size of his forearm, or a milkshake with a pair of deep red strawberries floating on its surface. The single relinquished nickel sat in the custard seller's till, its gold transmuted back to lead.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Dissatisfaction Metaphor Possibilities Regret The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

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 direct cause of several nasty divorces, and some of their purchasers had actually taken the effort to discover the identity of their anonymous author, sending me hate mail, dead fish, and poorly wrapped, oil-stained packages emitting ticking noises.

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Greeting Cards Humor Satire The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

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

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer Futures Perfection Possibilities The Dream Of Perpetual Motion

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

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Demons Dexter Palmer Foreshadowing Ominous Summoning The Dream Of Perpetual Motion Unwitting

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 hears your plea and performs his final miracle. He lays His hand on you and then He vanishes. And what mortal man can undo that? What human on this earth has the power to change a tin man back to flesh?

~ Dexter Palmer

Dexter Palmer Defense Mechanisms Dexter Palmer God Hearts Metaphor The Dream Of Perpetual Motion Tin Man
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