Quotes from Thomas M. Disch

For a lot of people, poetry tends to be dull. It's not read much. It takes a special kind of training and a lot of practice to read poetry with pleasure. It's like learning to like asparagus.

But before any of the small appliances who may be listening to this tale should begin to think that they might do the same thing, let them be warned: ELECTRICITY IS VERY DANGEROUS. Never play with old batteries! Never put your plug in a strange socket! And if you are in any doubt about the voltage of the current where you are living, ask a major appliance.

But the toaster was quite satisfied with itself, thank you. Though it knew from magazines that there were toasters who could toast four slices at a time, it didn't think that the master, who lived alone and seemed to have few friends, would have wanted a toaster of such institutional proportions. With toast, it's quality that matters, not quantity.

The toaster (lacking real bread) would pretend to make two crispy slices of toast. Or, if the day seemed special in some way, it would toast an imaginary English muffin.

This is my journal. I can be candid here. Candidly, I could not be more miserable.

The problem is that we've got a sense of humor and (Republicans have) got guns. Will we die laughing?

Gender and the complications it gives rise to simply aren't relevant to the lives appliances lead.

Sometimes the whole world is mud luscious and puddle wonderful

In any case, muffins that are only imaginary aren't liable to get stuck.

So, without saying anything to the others, it made its way to the farthest corner of the meadow and began to toast an imaginary muffin. That was always the best way to unwind when things got to be too much for it.

Poets are regarded as handicapped writers whose work must be treated with a tender condescension, such as one accords the athletic achievements of basketball players confined to wheelchairs.

Shoddiness is) the nature of human life. It takes an exertion to be indifferent to these things, but it's an exertion worth making. Also, it allows you luxuries like scorn and flippancy.

When one is experiencing failure, it is hard to resist the comfort of paranoia.

Sanity, however, was so integral to his character that neither hysteria nor horror could long have their way with him.

He thought proudly that many people in his position could not have adjusted, would have gone mad. Of course, he was descending.… But he was still sane. He had chosen his course and now he was following it.

But there you put your finger on what it is that separates the sheep from the goats, and vice versa: imagination. Those who possess it have an afterlife; those who don't possess it, or in whom it has greatly atrophied, are reborn as plants or animals. It's as simple, and unfair, as that. You could almost say that heaven is no more than a fantasm generated by the excess energies of the pooled imaginations of the blessed.

Jesus loved crème brûlée, but even with crème brûlée enough isn't just enough, it can get to be too much.

Creativeness is the ability to see relationships where none exist.

Gene Wolfe has produced a work of art that can satisfy adult appetites and in which even the most fantastical elements register as poetry rather than as penny-whistle whimsy.

Poets are regarded as handicapped writers whose work must be treated with a tender condescension, such as one accords the athletic achievements of basketball players confined to wheelchairs.