turtles rulz

“This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don’t think it’s a marvellous moral, I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

* * *

‘You hate America, don’t you?’ she said.
‘That would be as silly as loving it,’ I said. ‘It’s impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn’t interest me. It’s no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can’t think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can’t believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.’

* * *
A barfly started talking to me.
‘You know what the answer to communism is?’ he asked me.
‘Nope,’ I said.
‘Moral Rearmament,’ he said.
‘What the hell is that?’ I said.
‘It’s a movement,’ he said.
‘In what direction?’ I said.
‘That Moral Rearmament movement,’ he said, ‘believes in absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love.’
‘I certainly wish them all the luck in the world,’ I said.

* * *

‘There are plenty of good reasons for fighting,’ I said, ‘but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where’s evil? It’s that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It’s that part of every man that finds all lands of ugliness so attractive.’

from “Mother Night” by Kurt Vonnegut