Why I want to be a Bokononist
So I said good-bye to government,
And I gave my reason:
That a really good religion
Is a form of treason.
The First Book
Warning from title page: Don’t be a fool! Close this book at once! It is nothing but foma! (Def. : Foma are “lies”; “harmless untruths”; “a useful and harmless sort of horseshit”)
Verse 5: Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.
The Fourteenth Book
[ A short book with a long title. ]
Title: What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?
Only verse: Nothing.
On history:
History! Read it and weep!
Of course it’s trash!
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
On the end of the world:
Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,
And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.
And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,
Why just go ahead and scold Him. He’ll just smile and nod.
Bokonon’s Final Sentence
If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.
Un-moving pictures.
Kenneth: How do you picture death? What’s your worst-case scenario?
Benn: Well, from the very beginning, there have been pictures. And for me, the worst that can happen is that those pictures would stop.
-from More Die of Heartbreak
Will you stumble and fall tonight…?
Why do I long for another turn of time?
Why do I want the clocks to go faster
when my life depends on holding back the hands?
Why?
I want to kiss you.
