This item continues Grex's ongoing Mystery Quotation Game.  If you can guess
the author of a quotation, you get to enter the next quotation.

It's Dave Lovelace's turn, after he guessed my P. G. Wodehouse quote in the
Summer 1996 Mystery Quotation Item.

214 responses total.

where is the quote? or should i wait till the pizza arrives?
i shall be waiting it expectanlly!

 =)

Dave said in last month's item that he'd enter his quote the next time he
called in from wherever he keeps his books.

If it indeed _is_ Dave Lovelace's turn , Where _is_ he ?? 
(Or is the whole Quotation Thing taking a (Dave's) _turn_ for the
worse????!!!!)

It's only been a day or two.  Don't Panic.

"Don't panic" is from the Hitch-hiker's Guide to The Galaxy" by Douglas
Adams. 
Do I win?

Not unless Dave says so.

While we're waiting, here's a "toss-up" question, as they used to say on
College Bowl: "Writing is easy. All you have to do is stare at a blank sheet
of paper until blood begins to form on your forehead." Who wrote that?

Haven't a clue. However, it's a pleasure to see the
distinguished poet G.M. Hopkins right here on Grex. Your "Spring
and Fall" is one of my favorite poems of all time. (They let you
use a computer in the monastary now? Whatever happened to that
ol' vow of silence?)

*That's* Dorothy Parker.  I think.

Dorothy Parker wrote "Spring and Fall"??? Nah, not the one I
know. That's Gerard Manley Hopkins. Goes like this:

        Margaret, are you grieving
        Over Goldengrove unleaving?
        Leaves, like the things of man, you
        With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
        (etc.)

(Though I will admit the ending has a Parker-ish spin to it.)

Would the "writing is easy..." have been Mark Twain?

hopkins:  you wrote it! unless someone wrote it under your login while you
were away! sorry.. I have no idea who created and got that quote somewhat
copyrighted!

sorry... taking weird  classes that we talk about plagerism alot! and its not
even a English class! strrange!

Nice tries, one and all ... but the correct answer is (may I have the envelope
please?) Evelyn Waugh, 20th century British author. And here's one for fun:

In Memoriam Dorothy Parker

Minor surgery to truth's
All that's required in our youth;
A knowing glance in middle age
Can transform counterfeit to sage;

Painted grey and well-trimmed tire
Yield an object of desire,
And preferment may be yours
If your credit opens doors;

Yet though one is young or old,
Happiness rewards the bold.
This, the long and short of it:
Packaging's no match for wit.

I entered the quote in the mystery quote item in the books conference, where
I read it.  Rane didn't link this one over yet, I guess.  So I'll paste in
my quote & all the responses there so far, & we'll continue here.

#220 Dave Lovelace(davel) on Thu Sep 26 10:19:45 1996:
 OK, I'm going to do what Rane complains I'm *always* doing (generalizing from
 a single case, up to now).  Let's see who can get *this* one.  The author's
 style is extremely distinctive, so unfamiliarity with the particular work
 quoted should be no barrier:
 
          Extract from the Day Book:
          "Where," we asked the Information Factor at Camiroi City
      Terminal, "is the office of the local PTA?"
          "Isn't any," he said cheerfully.
          "You mean that in Camiroi City, the metropolis of the planet,
      there is no PTA?" our chairman Paul Piper asked with disbelief.
          "Isn't any office of it.  But you're poor strangers, so you
      deserve an answer even if you can't frame your questions properly.
      See that elderly man sitting on the bench and enjoying the sun?
      Go tell him you need a PTA.  He'll make you one."
          "Perhaps the initials convey a different meaning on Camiroi,"
      said Miss Munch, the first surrogate chairman.  "By them we mean--"
          "Parent Teachers Apparatus, of course.  Colloquial English
      is one of the six Earthian languages required here, you know.
      Don't be abashed.  He's a fine person, and he enjoys doing things
      for strangers.  He'll be glad to make you a PTA."
          We were nonplussed, but we walked over to the man indicated.
          "We are looking for the local PTA, sir," said Miss Smice, our
      second surrogate chairman.  "We were told that you might help us."
          "Oh, certainly," said the elderly Camiroi gentleman.  "One of
      you arrest that man walking there, and we'll get started with it."
          "Do what?" asked our Mr. Piper.
          "Arrest him.  I have noticed that your own words sometimes do
      not convey a meaning to you.  I often wonder how you do communicate
      among yourselves.  Arrest, take into custody, seize by any force
      physical or moral, and bring him here."
          "Yes, *sir*," cried Miss Hanks, our third surrogate chairman.
      She enjoyed things like this.  She arrested the walking Camiroi
      man with force partly physical and partly moral and brought him to
      the group.
          "It's a PTA they want, Meander," the elder Camiroi said to the
      one arrested.  "Grab three more, and we'll get started.  Let the
      lady help.  She's good at it."
          Our Miss Hanks and the Camiroi man named Meander arrested three
      other Camiroi men and brought them to the group.
          "Five.  It's enough," said the elderly Camiroi.  "We are hereby
      constituted a PTA and ordered into random action.  Now, how can we
      accommodate you, good Earth people?"
          "But are you legal?  Are you five persons competent to be a
      PTA?" demanded our Mr. Piper.
          "Any Camiroi citizen is competent to do any job on the planet
      of Camiroi," said one of the Camiroi men (we learned later that
      his name was Talarium), "otherwise Camiroi would be in a sad shape."
          "It may be," said our Miss Smice sourly.  "It all seems very
      informal.  What if one of you had to be World President?"
          "The odds are that it won't come to one man in ten," said the
      elderly Camiroi (his name was Philoxenus).  "I'm the only one of
      this group ever to serve as president of this Planet, and it was
      a pleasant week I spent in the Office.  Now to the point.  How can
      we accommodate you?"
          "We would like to see one of your schools in session," said our
      Mr. Piper.  "We would like to talk to the teachers and the students.
      We are here to compare the two systems of education."
          "There is no comparison," said old Philoxenus, "--meaning
      no offense.  Or no more than a little.  On Camiroi, we practice
      Education.  On Earth, they play a game, but they call it by the
      same name.  That makes the confusion.  Come.  We'll go to a school
      in session."
          "And to a public school," said Miss Smice suspiciously.
      "Do not fob off any fancy private school on us as typical."
          "That would be difficult," said Philoxenus.  "There is no
      public school in Camiroi City and only two remaining on the Planet.
      Only a small fraction of one percent of the students of Camiroi are
      in public schools.  We maintain that there is no more reason for
      the majority of children to be educated in a public school than to
      be raised in a public orphanage.  We realize, of course, that on
      Earth you have made a sacred buffalo of the public school."
          "Sacred cow," said our Mr. Piper.
          "Children and Earthlings should be corrected when they use
      words wrongly," said Philoxenus.  "How else will they learn the
      correct forms?  The animal held sacred in your own near Orient was
      of the species _bos_bubalus_ rather than _bos_bos_, a buffalo rather
      than a cow.  Shall we go to a school?"
          "If it cannot be a public school, at least let it be a typical
      school," said Miss Smice.
          "That again is impossible," said Philoxenus.  "Every school on
      Camiroi is in some respect atypical."
          We went to visit an atypical school.
#221 Rane Curl(rcurl) on Thu Sep 26 11:27:09 1996:
 I find this kind of pointless dialogue almost unreadable, but I did suffer
 through a lot of similar pointless dialogue in Heinlein, so I'll guess him.
#222 Matthew Stephen Rogers(raven) on Thu Sep 26 14:46:34 1996:
        Or maybe Philip K Dick...
#223 galactic librarian(adania) on Thu Sep 26 14:54:10 1996:
 IS there nore to that?  I am vclueless as to who it is...
#224 John H. Remmers(remmers) on Fri Sep 27 07:59:52 1996:
 No clue here either, but it's a cute passage.
#225 John H. Remmers(remmers) on Fri Sep 27 08:18:40 1996:
 (Um, I'm confused. This is the *summer* mysterious quote item.
 Shouldn't the new quotes be going the in the fall item (#6 in
 Agora)?)
#226 not currently reading Agora(davel) on Fri Sep 27 09:39:40 1996:
 I'm reading it in the books conference, where it's the most recent one.  I'll
 join agora temporarily & paste stuff in, but Rane needs to get on the ball
 & link it over here.
 
 Not Heinlein or Dick, BTW.


I'll enter some more when I have a chance.  I'd add that this is from a story
in a collection of the author's stories, & that I really like maybe 1/4 of
the stories (enough to keep the book for years), but can't stand most of the
rest.  The style is (as I said) pretty consistent, & should be enough to rule
out Heinlein & most everyone else.  (I can think of *one* other I might guess
if it were me, off hand.)

Somewhat reminiscent of certain parts of Ray Bradbury's _Martian Chronicles_.

Fall 1996 agora 6 <--> books 56.

I was going to forget this item, and then I noticed the text.
This is from one of my favorite authors.   If nobody gets it in a day 
or three, can I start dropping hints?

Not Bradbury.  Not Pratchett or Adams (guessed in the other item).  (Not *any*
Adams, even the somewhat more likely one who wasn't guessed.)

Ken, give me time to enter a couple more excerpts before you drop any hints
likely to give it away.  (You *could* always guess, you know.)

Here goes a bit more from the same story.  I'll enter something
else later.

         INCIDENT: Our first contact with the Camiroi students was a
     violent one.  One of them, a lively little boy about eight years old,
     ran into Miss Munch, knocked her down, and broke her glasses.  Then he
     jabbered something in an unknown tongue.
         "Is that Camiroi?" asked Mr. Piper with interest.  "From what I
     have heard, I supposed the language to have a harsher and fuller
     sound."
         "You mean you don't recognize it?" asked Philoxenus with
     amusement.  "What a droll admission from an educator.  The boy is very
     young and very ignorant.  Seeing that you were Earthians, he spoke in
     Hindi, which is the tongue used by more Earthians than any other.  No,
     no, Xypete, they are of the minority who speak English.  You can tell
     it by their colorless texture and the narrow heads on them."
         "I say you sure do have slow reaction, lady," the little boy
     Xypete explained.  "Even subhumans should react faster than that.  You
     just stand there and gape and let me bowl you over.  You want me to
     analyze you and see why you react so slow?"
         "No! No!"
         "You seem unhurt in structure from the fall," the little boy
     continued, "but if I hurt you I got to fix you.  Just strip down to
     your shift, and I'll go over you and make sure you're all right."
         "No! No! No!"
         "It's all right," said Philoxenus.  "All Camiroi children learn
     primary medicine in the first grade, setting bones and healing
     contusions and such."
         "No! No! I'm all right.  But he's broken my glasses."
         "Come along, Earthside lady, I'll make you some others," said the
     little boy.  "With your slow reaction time you sure can't afford the
     added handicap of defective vision.  Shall I fit you with contacts?"
         "No, I want glasses just like those which were broken.  Oh
     heavens, what will I do?"
         "You come, I do," said the little boy.  It was rather revealing to
     us that the little boy was able to test Miss Munch's eyes, grind
     lenses, make frames and have her fixed up within three minutes.  "I
     have made some improvements over those you wore before," the boy said,
     "to help compensate for your slow reaction time."
         "Are all the Camiroi students so talented?"  Mr Piper asked.  He
     was impressed.
         No.  Xypete is unusual," Philoxenus said.  "Most students would
     not be able to make a pair of glasses so quickly or competently till
     they were at least nine."

--- skipping a bunch ---

         "Where are their playgrounds?" Miss Hanks asked Talarium.
         "Oh, the whole world.  The children have the run of everything.
     To set up specific playgrounds would be like setting a table-sized
     aquarium down in the depths of the ocean.  It would really be
     pointless.
         CONFERENCE: The four of us from Earth, specifically from Dubuque,
     Iowa, were in discussion with the five members of the Camiroi PTA.
         "How do you maintain discipline?" Mr. Piper asked.
         "Indifferently," said Philoxenus.  "Oh, you mean in detail.  It
     varies.  Sometimes we let it drift, sometimes we pull them up short.
     Once they have learned that they must comply to an extent, there is
     little trouble.  Small children are often put down into a pit.  They
     do not eat or come out till they know their assignment."
         "But that is inhuman," said Miss Hanks.
         "Of course.  But small children are not yet entirely human.  If a
     child has not learned to accept discipline by the third or fourth
     grade, he is hanged."
         "Literally?" asked Miss Munch.
         "How would you hang a child figuratively?  And what effect would
     that have on the other children?"
         "By the neck?"  Miss Munch still was not satisfied.
         "By the neck until they are dead.  The other children always
     accept the example gracefully and do better.  Hanging isn't employed
     often.  Scarcely one child in a hundred is hanged."

Wow.  That actually sounds interesting. :)  I have no idea who it is, tho.
(it is like Heinlein)

I was going to mention the part about the hangings.  :)

        Doris Lessing?

This is probably against the rules, but what the heck: it's a chance to 
promote a favorite author.  Same author, different book:

     "And now I will baptize you," Valery spoke strangely 
  to ourself, "and you will be an unholy contraption no longer."
     "What?  Before I'm even born?" ourself asked.
     "Oh, you are quite born now," Valery grinned.  "We
  should have told you so, machine.  This may be as momentous
  to you as it is to us."
     Valery had a gallon jug of that cheap wine that she drinks
  and she was waving it around dangerously.
     "In the name of the twin archangels Israfael and Rafael
  to whom are delegated all mechanical things, in the sight of
  all holy persons present and in the knowing of all other 
  exceptional persons whose pre'cis are in the stew, I name you
  --" she smashed the top of the jug off on one of the near 
  high-spinning gyros (giving ourself slight malfunction and
  rumble forever) and sloshed the sour red stuff all over
  ourself's interior  ...  "I name you Epiktistes!"
 
  ...

     Valery lighted a long wax candle and set it in the jungle of 
  my mechanisms and tanks.
     "I light the candle of understanding in your heart," she said.
     "It is an anachronism, Epikt," said Cogsworth, who had 
  thought of the candle, "but we want you to have it.  
  For symbolism, and in case of power failure."

Ursula K. Leguin?

Whoever it is, I'm totally put off reading anything further by the author.....
(I note this to illuminate the vast range of judgement of an art by different
viewers, and the truth of *si gustibus non disputandem et* (if you will excuse
my fractured latin).

Not Le Guin.
I don't think I'm familiar myself with the source of
Ken's quote, but it sure sounds like the same person.  (I once had
one of the author's novels, but didn't like it enough to keep it.
So I'm stuck quoting shorts.)

So ... Let's try something from a different story.  I'll quote some
bits from various parts of it; as will be obvious, I'm picking out one
thread (with some context included).

    In the year 1893, land allotments in severalty were made to the
    remaining eight hundred and twenty-one Pawnee Indians.  Each would
    receive one hundred and sixty acres of land and no more, and
    thereafter the Pawnees would be expected to pay taxes on their land,
    the same as the White-Eyes did.
        "Kitkehahke!" Clarence Big-Saddle cussed.  "You can't kick a dog
    around proper on a hundred and sixty acres.  And I sure am not hear
    before about this pay taxes on land."
        Clarence Big-Saddle selected a nice green valley for his
    allotment.  It was one of the half dozen plots he had always regarded
    as his own.  He sodded around the summer lodge that he had there and
    made it an all-season home.  But he sure didn't intend to pay taxes on
    it.
        So he burned leaves and bark and made a speech:
        "That my valley be always wide and flourish and green and such
    stuff as that!" he orated in Pawnee chant style.  "But that it be
    narrow if an intruder come."
        He didn't have any balsam bark to burn.  He threw on a little cedar
    bark instead.  He didn't have any elder leaves.  He used a handful of
    jack-oak leaves.  And he forgot the word.  How you going to work it if
    you forget the word?
        "Petahauerat!" he howled out with the confidence he hoped would
    fool the fates.
        "That's the same long of a word," he said in a low aside to
    himself.  But he was doubtful.  "What am I, a White Man, a burr-tailed
    jack, a new kind of nut to think it will work?" he asked.  "I have to
    laugh at me.  Oh well, we see."
        He threw the rest of the bark and leaves on the fire, and he
    hollered the wrong word out again.
        And he was answered by a dazzling sheet of summer lightning.
        "Skidi!" Clarence Big-Saddle swore.  "It worked.  I didn't think
    it would."
        Clarence Big-Saddle lived on his land for many years, and he paid
    no taxes.  Intruders were unable to come down to his place.  The land
    was sold for taxes three times, but nobody ever came down to claim it.
    Finally, it was carried as open land on the books.  Homesteaders filed
    on it several times, but none of them fulfilled the qualification of
    living on the land.

--- skipping a bunch. (A homesteader calls in help to find out why ---
--- his half-mile-square land seems to be a ditch a few feet wide) ---

        That Robert Rampart stirred things up for a while then.  He got
    the sheriff there, and the highway patrolmen.  A ditch had stolen his
    wife and five children, he said, and maybe had killed them.  And if
    anybody laughs, there may be another killing.  He got the colonel of
    the State National Guard there, and a command post set up.  He got a
    couple of airplane pilots.  Robert Rampart had one quality: when he
    hollered, people came.
        He got the newsmen out from T-Town, and the eminent scientists,
    Dr. Velikof Vonk, Arpad Arkabaranan, and Willy McGilly.  That bunch
    turns up every time you get on a good one.  They just happen to be in
    that part of the country where something interesting is going on.
        They attacked the thing from all four sides and the top, and by
    inner and outer theory.  If a thing measures half a mile on each side,
    and the sides are straight, there just has to be something in the
    middle of it.  They took pictures from the air, and they turned out
    perfect.  They proved that Robert Rampart had the prettiest hundred
    and sixty acres in the country, the larger part of it being a lush
    green valley, and all of it being half a mile on a side, and situated
    just where it should be.  They took ground-level photos then, and it
    showed a beautiful half-mile stretch of land between the boundaries of
    Charley Dublin and Hollister Hyde.  But a man isn't a camera.  None of
    them could see that beautiful spread with the eyes in their heads.
    Where was it?

--- skipping a couple more pages ---

        After a while a bunch of them were off in that little tavern on
    the road between Cleveland and Osage.  It was only half a mile away.
    If the valley had run in the other direction, it would have been
    only six feet away.
        "It is a psychic nexus in the form of an elongated dome," said
    the eminent scientist Dr. Velikof Vonk.  "It is maintained
    subconsciously by the concatenation of at least two minds, the
    stronger of them belonging to a man dead for many years.  It has
    apparently existed for a little less than a hundred years, and in
    another hundred years it will be considerably weakened.  We know from
    our checking out folk tales of Europe as well as Cambodia that these
    ensorceled ares seldom survive for more than two hundred and fifty
    years.  The person who first set such a thing in being will usually
    lose interest in it, and in all worldly things, within a hundred years
    of his own death.  This is a simple thanato-psychic limitation.  As a
    short-term device, the thing has been used several times as a military
    tactic.
        "This psychic nexus, as long as it maintains itself, causes group
    illusion, but it is really a simple thing.  It doesn't fool birds or
    rabbits or cattle or cameras, only humans.  There is nothing
    meteorological about it.  It is strictly psychological.  I'm glad I
    was able to give a scientific explanation to it or it would have
    worried me."
        "It is continental fault coinciding with a noospheric fault," said
    the eminent scientist Arpad Arkabaranan.  "The valley really is half a
    mile wide, and at the same time it really is only five feet wide.  If
    we measured correctly, we would get these dual measurements.  Of
    course it is meteorological!  Everything including dreams is
    meteorological.  It is the animals and cameras which are fooled, as
    lacking a true dimension; it is only humans who see the true duality.
    The phenomenon should be common along the whole continental fault
    where the earth gains or loses half a mile that has to go somewhere.
    Likely it extends through the whole sweep of the Cross Timbers.  Many
    of those trees appear twice, and many do not appear at all.  A man in
    the proper state of mind could farm that land or raise cattle on it,
    but it doesn't really exist.  There is a clear parallel in the
    Luftspiegelungthal sector in the Black Forest of Germany which exists,
    or does not exist, according to the circumstances and to the attitude
    of the beholder.  Then we have the case of Mad Mountain in Morgan
    County, Tennessee, which isn't there all the time, and also the Little
    Lobo Mirage south of Presidio, Texas, from which twenty thousand
    barrels of water were pumped in one two-and-a-half-year period before
    the mirage reverted to mirage status.  I'm glad I was able to give a
    scientific explanation to this or it would have worried me."
        "I just don't understand how he worked it," said the eminent
    scientist Willy McGilly.  "Cedar bark, jack-oak leaves, and the word
    'Petahauerat.'  The thing's impossible!  When I was a boy and we
    wanted to make a hideout, we used bark from the skunk-spruce tree, the
    leaves of a box-elder, and the word was 'Boadicea.'  All three
    elements are wrong here.  I cannot find a scientific explanation for
    it, and it does worry me."
        They went back to Narrow Valley.  Robert Rampart was still
    chanting dully: "I want my land.  I want my children.  I want my
    wife."
        Nina Rampart came chugging up out of the narrow ditch in the
    camper and emerged through that little gate a few yards down the fence
    row.
        "Supper's ready and we're tired of waiting for you, Robert," she
    said.  "A fine homesteader you are!  Afraid to come onto your own
    land!  Come along now; I'm tired of waiting for you."
        "I want my land!  I want my children!  I want my wife!"  Robert
    Rampart still chanted.  "Oh, there you are, Nina.  You stay here this
    time. I want my land!  I want my children!  I want an answer to this
    terrible thing."
        "It is time we decided who wears the pants in this family," Nina
    said stoutly.  She picked up her husband, slung him over her shoulder,
    carried him to the camper and dumped him in, slammed (as it seemed) a
    dozen doors all at once, and drove furiously down into the Narrow
    Valley, which already seemed wider.
        Why, that place was getting normaler and normaler by the minute!
    Pretty soon it looked almost as wide as it was supposed to be.  The
    psychic nexus in the form of an elongated dome had collapsed.  The
    continental fault that coincided with the noospheric fault had faced
    facts and decided to conform.  The Ramparts were in effective
    possession of their homestead, and Narrow Valley was as normal as any
    place anywhere.
        "I have lost my land," Clarence Little-Saddle moaned.  "It was the
    land of my father Clarence Big-Saddle, and I meant it to be the land
    of my son Clarence Bare-Back.  It looked so narrow that people did not
    notice how wide it was, and people did not try to enter it.  Now I
    have lost it."
        Clarence Little-Saddle and the eminent scientist Willy McGilly
    were now standing on the edge of Narrow Valley, which now appeared its
    true half-mile extent.  The moon was just rising, so big that it
    filled a third of the sky.  Who would have imagined that it would take
    a hundred and eight of such monstrous things to reach from the horizon
    to a point overhead, and yet you could sight it with sighters and
    figure it so.
        "I had a little bear-cat by the tail and I let it go," Clarence
    groaned.  "I had a fine valley for free, and I have lost it.  I am
    like that hard-luck guy in the funny-paper or Job in the Bible.
    Destitution is my lot."
        Willy McGilly looked around furtively.  They were alone on the
    edge of the half-mile-wide valley.
        "Let's give it a booster shot," Willy McGilly said.
        Hey, those two got with it!  They started a snapping fire and
    began to throw the stuff onto it.  Bark from the dog-elm tree--how do
    you know it won't work?
        It *was* working!  Already the other side of the valley seemed a
    hundred yards closer, and there were alarmed noises coming up from the
    people in the valley.
        Leaves from a black locust tree--and the valley narrowed still
    more!  There was, moreover, terrified screaming of both children and
    big people from the depths of Narrow Valley, and the happy voice of
    Mary Mabel Rampart chanting "Earthquake! Earthquake!"
        "That my valley be always wide and flourish and such stuff, and
    green with money and grass!" Clarence Little-Saddle orated in Pawnee
    chant style, "but that it be narrow if intruders come, smash them like
    bugs!"
        People, that valley wasn't over a hundred feet wide now, and the
    screaming of the people in the bottom of the valley had been joined by
    the hysterical coughing of the camper car starting up.
        Willy and Clarence threw everything that was left on the fire.
    But the word?  The word?  Who remembers the word?
        "Corsicanatexas!" Clarence Little-Saddle howled out with
    confidence he hoped would fool the fates.
        He was answered not only by a dazzling sheet of summer lightning,
    but also by thunder and raindrops.
        "Chahiksi!" Clarence Little-Saddle swore.  "It worked.  I didn't
    think it would.  It will be all right now.  I can use the rain."
        The valley was again a ditch only five feet wide.

--- (skipping the Ramparts' rather histrionic retreat) ---

        The camper car coughed again and bumped along on level ground.
    This couldn't last forever.  The car was widening out as it bumped
    along.
        "Did we overdo it, Clarence?" Willy McGilly asked.  "What did one
    flat-lander say to the other?"
        "Dimension of us never got around," Clarence said.  "No, I don't
    think we overdid it, Willy,  That car must be eighteen inches wide
    already, and they all ought to be normal by the time they reach the
    main road.  The next time I do it, I think I'll throw wood-grain
    plastic on the fire to see who's kidding who."

It sounds to me like Doris Lessing.

I was tempted to guess L'Engle, but don't really believe it.  Well, I've no
better ideas, so I'll guess it's L'Engle.

I'll tell y'all tomorrow, just to spare rane any more excerpts.
 
Davel, the characters Valery and Epiktistes appear in three 
stories in your book, but maybe those are some of the ones you don't 
like.  One of them is the "Charlemagne" story.

Dave's first quotes, with the people talking about the educational system on
a planet with precocious children, are *definitely* something I've read,
though it was many years ago.  I definitely *ought* to be able to place it.
The other quotes are unfamiliar.  I don't think it's Madeline L'Engle, because
at some point I had read everything of hers, but I definitely haven't read
some of the things Ken is quoting.  Though L'Engle kept writing after I
stopped reading.  Argh!

I put in the quote about Valery for you, Valerie.  :)

(I remembered Epiktistes, but not that bit, definitely.  And knew which story,
though it's not one I really like.)

Let's see.  Not Lessing.  Not L'Engle.  I guess I have time for one more
quote:

    He began by breaking things that morning.  He broke the glass of water
    on his night stand.  He knocked it crazily against the opposite wall
    and shattered it.  Yet it shattered slowly.  This would have surprised
    him if he had been fully awake, for he had only reached out weakly for
    it.
        Nor had he wakened regularly to his alarm; he had wakened to a
    weird, slow, low booming, yet the clock said six, time for the alarm.
    And the low boom, when it came again, seemed to come from the clock.
        He reached out and touched it gently, but it floated off the stand
    at his touch and bounced around slowly on the floor.  And when he
    picked it up again it had stopped, nor would shaking start it.
        He checked the electric clock in the kitchen.  This also said six
    o'clock, but the sweep hand did not move.  In his living room the
    radio clock said six, but the second hand seemed stationary.
        "But the lights in both rooms work," said Vincent.  "How are the
    clocks both stopped?  Are the receptacles on a separate circuit?"
        He went back to his bedroom and got his wristwatch.  It also said
    six; and its sweep hand did not sweep.
        "Now this could get silly.  What is it that would stop both
    mechanical and electrical clocks?"
        He went to the window and looked out at the advertising clock on
    the Mutual Insurance Building.  It said six o'clock, and the second
    hand did not move.
        "Well, it is possible that the confusion is not limited to myself.
    I heard once the fanciful theory that a cold shower will clear the
    mind.  For me it never has, but I will try it.  I can always use
    cleanliness for an excuse."
        The shower didn't work.  Yes, it did: the water came now, but not
    like water; like very slow syrup that hung in the air.  He reached up
    to touch it hanging down there and stretching.  And it shattered like
    glass when he touched it, and drifted in fantastic slow globs across
    the room.  But it had the feel of water.  It was wet and pleasantly
    cool.  And in a quarter of a minute or so it was down over his
    shoulders and back, and he luxuriated in it.  He let it soak on his
    noggin, and it cleared his wits at once.
        "There is not a thing wrong with me.  I am fine.  It is not my
    fault that the water is slow this morning and other things are awry."
        He reached for the towel and it tore to pieces in his hands like
    porous wet paper.
        He now became very careful in the way he handled things.  Slowly,
    tenderly and deftly he took them so that they would not break.  He
    shaved himself without mishap in spite of the slow water in the
    lavatory also.
        Then he dressed himself with the greatest caution and cunning,
    breaking nothing except his shoe laces, and that is likely to happen
    at any time.
        "If there is nothing the matter with me, then I will check and see
    if there is anything seriously wrong with the world.  The dawn was
    fairly along when I looked out, as it should have been.  Approximately
    twenty minutes have passed; it is a clear morning: the sun should now
    have hit the top several stories of the Insurance Building."
        But it had not.  It was still a clear morning, but the dawn had
    not brightened at all in the twenty minutes.  And that big clock still
    said six.  It had not changed.
        Yet it had changed, and he knew it with a queer feeling.  He
    pictured it as it had been before.  But the sweep second hand had
    moved.  It had swept a third of the dial.

--- skipping about 8 pages ---

        Charles Vincent never saw the man's face at all.  It is very dark
    in some of those clubs and the Coq Bleu is like the inside of a tomb.
    Vincent went to the clubs only about once a month, sometimes after a
    show when he did not want to go home to bed, sometimes when he was
    just plain restless.
        Citizens of the more fortunate states may not know of the
    mysteries of the clubs.  In Vincent's the only bars are beer bars, and
    only in the clubs can a person get a drink, and only members are
    admitted.  It is true that even such a small club as the Coq Bleu had
    thirty thousand members, and at a dollar a year this is a nice
    sideline.  The little numbered membership cards cost a penny each for
    the printing, and the member wrote in his own name.  But he was
    supposed to have a card or a dollar for a card to gain admittance.
        But there could be no entertainment in the clubs.  There was
    nothing there but the little bar room in the near darkness.  The near
    darkness of the clubs was custom only but it had the force of law.
        The man was there, and then he was not, and then he was there
    again.  And always where he sat it was too dark to see his face.
        "I wonder," he said to Vincent (or to the bar at large, though
    there were no other customers and the bartender was asleep), I wonder
    if you have read Zubarin on the relationship of extradigitalism to
    genius."
        "I have never heard of the work nor of the man," said Vincent.
    "Doubt if either exist."
        "I am Zubarin," said the man.
        Vincent instinctively hid his misshapen left thumb.  Yet it could
    not have been noticed in that light, and he must have been crazy to
    believe that there was any connection between it and the man's remark.
    It was not truly a double thumb.  He was not an extradigital, nor was
    he a genius.
        "I refuse to become interested in you," said Vincent.  "I am on
    the verge of leaving.  I dislike waking the bartender, but I did want
    another drink."
        "Sooner done than said."
        "What is?"
        "Your glass is full."
        "It is?  So it is.  Is it a trick?"
        "Trick is a name for anything either too frivolous or too
    mystifying for us to comprehend.  But on one long early morning a
    month ago you also could have done the trick, and nearly as well."
        "Could I have?  How do you know about my long early
    morning--assuming there to have been such?"
        "I watched you for a while.  Few others have the equipment with
    which to watch you when you're in the aspect."
        So they were silent for some time, and Vincent watched the clock
    and was ready to go.
        "I wonder," said the man in the dark, "if you have read
    Schimmelpenninck on the sexagintal and the duodecimal in the Chaldee
    Mysteries."
        "I have not, and I doubt if anyone else has.  I would guess that
    you are also Schimmelpenninck, and that you have just made up the name
    on the spur of the moment."
        "I am Schimm, it is true, but I made up the name on the spur of
    the moment many years ago."
        "I am a little bored with you," said Vincent, "but I would
    appreciate it if you'd do your glass-filling trick once more."
        "I have just done so again.  And you are not bored; you are
    frightened."
        "Of what?" asked Vincent, whose glass had in fact filled again.
        "Of reentering a dream that you are not sure was a dream.  But
    there are often advantages to being both invisible and inaudible."
        "Can you be invisible?"
        "Was I not so when I went behind the bar just now and fixed you a
    drink?"
        "How?"
        "A man in full stride goes at the rate of about five miles an
    hour.  Multiply that by sixty, which is the number of time.  When I
    leave my stool and go behind the bar I go at the rate of three hundred
    miles an hour.  So I am invisible to you, particularly if I move while
    you blink."
        "One thing does not match.  You might have got around there and
    back.  But you could not have poured."
        "Shall I say that mastery over liquids and other objects is not
    given to beginners?  But for us there are many ways to outwit the
    slowness of matter."

Wow that was really long!
I still, however, hae no clue...

        Philip Jose Farmer?  Which I think BTW is pseud for Kurt Vonnegut

The quotes aren't Farmer, and Farmer isn't Vonnegut.

#35 is an often-heard misconception.  It's because Farmer, I think,
wrote a pastiche under the name Kilgore Trout; Trout was one of 
Vonnegut's characters.
 
Well, it's now Monday, so I will reveal all.  OK, I will reveal most.
The author of davel's and my quotes is R.A. Lafferty.
Dave's quotes about the education system are from the story
"Primary Education Among the Camiroi."  His next quote is from 
"Narrow Valley."  Both of these stories are from the collection 
NINE HUNDRED GRANDMOTHERS, which was one of Terry Carr's old Ace 
Specials.   I don't recognize Dave's third quote, but it must be 
from the same book.   My quote about the baptism of the machine 
Epiktistes is from the novel ARRIVE AT EASTERWINE.

Lafferty is an Irish Catholic who lives in the US Southwest;
Catholicism and Native American mysticism play large roles in his 
writing.   I've loved his prose style ever since an old girlfriend 
introduced me to it.
 
OK, lemme go dig up a suitable challenge.

Hmm.  The last quote was bits from "The Six Fingers of Time", my personal
favorite of Lafferty's writing.  I used to have his novel _Past_Master_ (given
to me by a friend who also gave me _Nine_Hundred_Grandmothers_ & who likes
Lafferty better than I do).

(Note to Rane: Lafferty is not truly obscure, just a bit minor & now
somewhat out of date.  A couple of his stories, at least, were in anthologies
which were surely read by some of those participating in this game.  (I have
at least one in a _Best_SF_of_some-year-or-other, myself; the most widely-read
such anthology was probably Harlan Ellison's _Dangerous_Visions_.))

Hmmm.  I've read a little Lafferty, but didn't like it enough to read more.

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