Libra Quotes
"There is a tendency of plots to move toward death. He believed that the nature of death is woven into the nature of every plot."
"This is the room of dreams, the room where it has taken him all these years to learn that his subject is not politics or violent crimes but men in small rooms."
"Libra is proof that the best authors can do anything they want."
"A narrative plot no less than a conspiracy of armed men."
"The men in Libra, including Lee Harvey Oswald, are such men, as are all writers."
"Secrets are an exalted state, almost a dream state."
"He knew where everything is. This is the room of growing old, the fireproof room, paper everywhere."
"We need an event that will excite and shock the exile community, the whole country."
"The truth was he hadn't placed agents in Zenith Technical Enterprises. His old team was already there."
"The failure was now openly acknowledged, commemorated before forty thousand people in a football stadium, all the repressed material sent in reconverted waves into Televisionland."
"A wind sprang from the east, an idea of rain, sudden, pervading the air."
"The faintly musty smell, the coolness of the small room, the familiar labels on jars and cans made him feel like an ancient and tired child."
"He respected the President for going to Miami."
"The ceremony had not renewed the cause, the forceful devotion to a free Havana."
"He saw it now as pure public relations, the kind of gleaming imagery that marked every move the administration made."
"The car pulled up and he went down the steps to help Mary Frances take the groceries inside."
"He saw himself go inside, a fellow on a quiet street doing ordinary things, unafraid of being watched."
"This administration still bullies Castro. It's ridiculous and unnecessary."
"He's a complete fascist degenerate, this man Walker. A very dangerous man with his racism, his anti-Castro crusades."
"They get their politics all mixed up with the second coming of Christ."
"The administration went from passionate and total dedication to an attitude of complete aloofness and indifference and they did it in goddamn record time."
"In John Birch, we have a hundred thousand members. Way out of hand."
"It was all so curiously funny. It was rich, that's what it was."
"We're supposed to believe he's the hero of the age. Did you ever see a man in such a hurry to be great?"
"What's he plotting with Castro? What kind of back channel does he have working with the Soviets?"
"The truth is he hasn't written all that much. He has extensive and overlapping notes- notes in three-foot drifts, all these years of notes."
"It is impossible to stop assembling data. The stuff keeps coming."
"The way we fake our own files, who knows for sure?"
"To have true socialism, we first establish capitalism, totally and heartlessly, and then destroy it by degrees, bury it in the sea."
"A vigorous bayonet assault, executed by Marines eager to drive home cold steel, can strike terror in the ranks of the enemy."
"There are no right answers in this head. It is the stupidest arrogance to give an answer that you think is right."
"Capitalism is beginning to die. It is taking desperate measures. There is hysteria in the air, like hating Negroes and communists."
"The military mind. The police state is not Russia. It's wherever we have the mind that can think up manuals full of rules for killing."
"It's the whole huge system. We're a zero in the system."
"I have, he has, she has, you have, we have, they have."
"I consider it total superstition. People build their lives around this falsehood."
"I want to write short stories on contemporary American life. I saw a lot. I kept silent and observed."
"When I read Hemingway I get hungry. It's the style that does it."
"There is time for everything, time to recall the smallest moment, time to revise your story, time to change your mind."
"I have a click in my knee when I bend. What do you think, old age?"
"An easy case-send him home-except that Alek had a quota."
"At twenty years old, all you know is that you're twenty. Everything else is a mist that swirls around this fact."
"No plane surfaces here. We are living in curved space."
"The first thing you consider is go right to the top."
"All the time he was in Russia he'd barely thought of Trotsky. But now he could feel the man's spirit."
"If they could only make it to Texas, things would be all right."
"The thing that hovers over every secret is betrayal."
"She matched left hands now and fell sideways to the bed laughing."
"They want to give themselves away, in whispers, to someone standing in the shadows."
"He felt a joy so strong it might be measured in the language of angelic orders."
"Plots carry their own logic. There is a tendency of plots to move toward death."
"He wanted to carry himself with a clear sense of role, make a move one time that was not disappointed."
"They shared a box of donuts and talked some more."
"Next day they had an idea. Let's put a bullet in General Walker's head."
"She asked him if he would teach her English now."
"What a sense of destiny he had, locked in the miniature room, creating a design, a network of connections."
"He felt good about having Dupard behind him."
"Because what are they liable to do if I don't show I'm linked to law enforcement?"
"It is only disturbing the peace. So-called creating a scene."
"It is only disturbing the peace. Tell them as little as possible."
"Trotsky took his name from a jailer in Odessa and carried it into the pages of a thousand books."
"You see, none of this really mattered. What mattered was collecting the experiences, documenting the experiences, saving it all for the eyes of Cuban officials."
"Certainly it is obvious to me, having been educated in New Orleans and having been instilled with the ideals of democracy and objectiveness, that Cuba and the right of Cubans to self-determination is more or less self-evident."
"The right to be in a minority and not to be suppressed."
"A man, a madman, whatever he was, shadow-boxed outside the toilets at the Habana."
"I have a far mean streak of independence brought on by neglect."
"It's the thing that waits just beyond. We share a consciousness."
"Your man Kennedy has a little romance of his own with the idea of death."
"They devise a plan, you fit it perfectly. They lose you, here you are. There's a pattern in things."
"This is one of those times I don't know if I'm doing it or remembering it."
"Something we don't know about. Truth isn't what we know or feel."
"When you get back to Dallas, there are some places you ought to know about."
"Let me pass a thought through the ozone just to get your clock unwound."
"Some things are true. Some are truer than true."
"Everything he heard and saw and read these days was really about him."
"He knew his rights. He had his guaranteed rights."
"Once Oswald's leftist sympathies are exposed, the authorities will conclude, will want to conclude, that Castro agents recruited him, used him, killed him."
"They were here to be an event, a consciousness."
"Who wants a president with a pigeon's heart?"
"We're involved one way or another whether we like it or not."
"The revolution must be a school of unfettered thought."
"If I don't get there in time, it's decreed I wasn't meant to do it."
"If I get in this easy, it means they want me to do it."
"Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach."
"A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not."
"They'd introduced metal into his body. This is what caused the pain."
"There are important things he has yet to learn. There are lives he must examine."
"We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle."
"All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act."
"The heart was seen to be flabby and not beating at all."
"Expired: 13:07. Two sponges missing when body closed."
"He lives in a cell in an isolated area of the county jail, a small square room with a toilet bowl and a mattress on the floor."
"He begins to merge with Oswald. He can't tell the difference between them."
"It is the power and momentum of mass feelings."
"He is miscast, or cast as someone else, as Oswald."
"Oswald is inside him now. How can he fight the knowledge of what he is?"
"The camera doesn't catch all of it. There seem to be missing frames, lost levels of information."
"Brief and simple as the shooting is, it is too much to take in, too mingled in jumped-up energies."
"The picture jumps. The surprise and pain in Oswald's face remove him from the company around him."
"The telephone rang for the twentieth time. She didn't move."