they’ve received the report, he thought. Now they’ll praise me. Well, I’m all for that. I like being praised. Especially by General Lemchen, in spite of himself. It’s funny, I wonder why we like being praised. There’s no money in it. Fame? (Location 1797)
sake. The way children like ice cream. It’s an inferiority complex, that’s what it is. Praise assuages our insecurities. And ridiculously so. How could I rise in my own opinion? Don’t I know myself—fat old Richard H. Noonan? By the way, what does that H stand for? What a thing! And there’s no one to ask. Not like I can ask General Lemchen … Oh, I got it! Herbert. (Location 1800)
Everyone makes a buck on the side, while the learned men pompously hold forth: On the one hand, we are forced to admit; on the other hand, we can’t dispute, because object so-and-so, when irradiated with X-rays at an eighteen-degree angle, emits quasiheated electrons at a twenty-two-degree angle. The hell with it! One way or another, I won’t live till the end. (Location 1817)
And it’s not because they are more clever and cunning than we are. The world is just like that. Man is like that. If it wasn’t the Visit, it would have been something else. Pigs can always find mud. (Location 2092)
Redrick, he says, you’re a destroyer of balance, you’re a disturber of peace, for you, Redrick, he says, any order is bad, a bad order is bad, a good order is bad—because of people like you, there will never be heaven on Earth. (Location 2918)
we undoubtedly had in mind the streetwise Stullky, a tough and even ruthless youth, who, however, was by no means without a certain boyish chivalry and generosity. And at the time it didn’t even cross our minds that his name wasn’t Stullky at all, but was actually pronounced “stawky.” (Location 3136)
