Quotes from Galapagos


from Vonnegut, K. Galapagos publ. by Dell Publishing. © 1985.
ISBN 0-440-12779-3. Page numbers are from the Laurel paperback edition.
Kudos to John Hutchinson who lent me the book.


What made marriage so difficult back then was yet again that instigator of so many other sorts of heart-break: the oversize brain. That cumbersome computer could hold so many contradictory opinions on so many different subjects all at once, and switch from one opinion or subject to another so quickly, that a discussion between a husband and wife under stress could end up like a fight between blindfolded people wearing roller skates.
- p.66


In the era of big brains, life stories could end up any which way. Look at mine.
- p.98


They were dead now, and the sun was going down on a world where so many people believed, a million years ago, that only the fit survived.
- p. 151


Take it from somebody who has been around for a million years: When you get right down to it, food is practically the whole story every time.
- p. 177


That, in my opinion, was the most diabolical aspect of those old-time big brains: They would tell their owners, in effect, "Here is a crazy thing we could actually do, probably, but we would never do it of course. It's just fun to think about it." ...What her big brain certainly wasn't going to tell her was that, if she came up with an idea for a novel experiment which had a chance of working, her big brain would make her life a hell until she had actually performed that experiment.
- p. 266


Ten minutes after an orgasm, guess what?
- p. 231