This is a revival of the "Mysterious Quote", an ever-popular Grex
game that apparently took a summer vacation.

Here's the idea: The person who's "it" posts a short quotation from
a published work -- it can be fiction or non-fiction, prose or
poetry.  The object is to guess the *author* of the quote.  The
first person to guess correctly gets to give the next quote.

Some guidelines:  The author should be someone whom at least some
users are apt to have heard of.  If people are having trouble
guessing, it's appropriate to give hints.  And if you think you've
given a correct guess, wait for the poster of the quote to confirm
it before entering a new quote.  

132 responses total.

I'll go first.  Here's my quote.  Remember, the object is to guess
the author.
    
    Suppose the pieces of the jigsaw start off in a box in the
    ordered arrangement in which they form a picture.  If you shake
    the box, the pieces will take up another arrangement.  This will
    probably be a disordered arrangement in which the pieces don't
    form a proper picture, simply because there are so many more
    disordered arrangements.  Some groups of pieces may still form
    parts of the picture, but the more you shake the box, the more
    likely it is that these groups will get broken up and the pieces
    will be in a completely jumbled state in which they don't form
    any sort of picture.  So the disorder of the pieces will probably
    increase with time if the pieces obey the initial condition that
    they start off in a condition of high order.
    
    Suppose, however, that God decided that the universe should
    finish up in a state of high order but that it didn't matter what
    state it started in.  At early times the universe would probably
    be in a disordered state.  This would mean that disorder would
    *decrease* with time.  You would see broken cups gathering
    themselves together and jumping back on the table.  However, any
    human beings who were observing the cups would be living in a
    universe in which disorder decreased with time.  I shall argue
    that such beings would have a psychological arrow of time that
    was backward.  That is, they would remember events in the future,
    and not remember events in their past.  When the cup was broken,
    they would remember it being on the table, but when it was on the
    table, they would not remember it being on the floor.

Umm... Stephen Hawking?

william s. burroughs?

Descartes?

It's Stephen Hawking - otaking got it.  (I thought this would probably
be quick...)

Okay, otaking's up for the next quote.

Good quote!

The most thoroughly and relentlessly Damned, banned, excluded, condemned,
forbidden, ostracized, ignored, suppressed, repressed, robbed, brutalized and
defamed of all Damned Things is the individual human being. The social
engineers, statisticians, psycholgists, sociologists, market researchers,
landlords, bureaucrats, captains of industry, bankers, governors, commissars,
kings and presidents are perpetually forcing this Damned Thing into carefully
prepared blueprints and perpetually irritated that the Damned Thing will not
fit into the slot assigned to it. The theologians call it a sinner and try
to reform it. The governor calls it a criminal and tries to punish it. The
psychotherapist calls it a neurotic and tries to cure it. Still, the Damned
Thing will not fit into their slots.

(Durn, that style and attitude seem familiar.  Lemme think here...)

   wow.  that's really familiar.  hmmm....i'm pretty sure this isn't it,
but i'll guess it anyway:  tom robbins?

        Sounds like _Still Life with Woodpecker_ if anything.

Ack!  I know I've seen this!  <pounds forehead with mallet>

Thomas Pynchon?

(For the record, someone linked item 18 of the Fall 1999 agora to
books item 84.)

No, it's not Tom Robbins or Thomas Pynchon.

Kurt Vonnegut?

Pat Buchanan?  :-)

Keep trying. ^_^

Heinlein?

Nope.

Robert Anton Wilson?

Yep. You're right Sara. Bonus points if you can name the fictional author of
the quote. Either way, you're next.

  presumably Hagbard Celine..

You got it Mike. :)

Cool, I shall dig something up soon to post here...

{Why do I keep confusing Robert Anton Wilson and Anson McDonald? Some
day I'm going to read Wilson's trilogy.}

  That's one way to put an end to the continuing confusion!

Re #25: Who is Anson McDonald?

I highly recommend any of Wilson's books, especially The Illuminatus! Trilogy.

Anson McDonald was Heinlein's pseudo.  During the early 1940's he was 
writing so much, and was so successful, that pretty often he'd have two 
stories in the same issue of a science fiction magazine.  Anson McDonald 
was the author of the 2nd story.  Heinlein's middle initial was Anson.

Astounding (now called Analog) magazine had a reader survey called the 
Analytical Laboratory for the years when John Campbell was the editor.  
Someone went back and compiled all the Analytical Laboratories over the 
history of the magazine, and rated the authors by all-time popularity.  
Heinlein was #1, which didn't surprise anyone.  Anson McDonald was #2.

        He's a good author, and an astounding philosopher.

  I've never been particularly impressed by his philosophizing..
  He's a competent story-teller within limited paramaters but in
  my opinion his appeal has always rested more on the popularity
  of his patented "rousing adventure yarn with liberal doses of
  Horation Alger" formula than on any appreciation for his writing
  technique.

  I think Heinlein gets credit for too much, largely (in my opinion)
  because due to the juvenile-accessible nature of his earlier fiction
  he's one of the first places many young science-fiction readers
  encounter certain ideas.  (I think his appeal, too, is especially
  strong for young boys -- I can't imagine what the appeal of his stories
  would be to young girls: he occasionally has strong characters who are
  supposed to be girls but they act very much like young boys in drag..)

  My personal theory on Heinlein is that you could, with surprisingly
  little error, predict a science-fiction fan's opinion of him as a
  function of two variables -- the sex of the person in question and
  the age at which they first encountered Heinlein's books.

  If anyone wants to continue this discussion in the scifi conference
  I'm game.  It could certainly use the activity..

It's an interesting theory.  I'm male and first encountered Heinlein when I 
was 9, and have gone on to read almost everything he's written.  So I guess I
fit profile.

Rather interesting, however, that his middle "initial" ins Anson; most ppl
only get one lettter for their initial.  :-)

        Heinlien's philsophy is simpler than most I've read but fairly well
worked out;  for example, his philosophy on violence, summed up, is that
violence exists in this world, and that so long as it does, a society has to
have the capacity for it, or else - higher morals or culture or not - it will
be overcome by a society that does.  

        I was impressed by that;  most philosophers, on a problem such as
violence, never manage to see that it is not entirely a useless artifact to
be left in the past at this point in time.

I'm female and read my first (and so far only ) Heinlein book at age
fifteen or so -- _Stranger In a Strange Land_.  Really really liked the
first 2/3 or so, then got irritated at the way the philosophy-to-plot
ratio suddenly flip-flopped.  Still found him intriguing enough that I
want to read a few more of his books one of these days... I'd be curious
as to how others prove or disprove mcnally's theory...

But that's not the point of this item, eh?

        "It was someplace to go.  It was like going to another century,
actually.  But I felt like a complete outsider."  I closed my eyes,
fighting an old ache.
        "How do you mean?"
        "I'm pretty good at languages but I never could get the hang of
fitting in.  Not anywhere, but especially not there."
        "Why do you think you don't fit in?  Give me an example."
        It was plain that I'd always been an oddity in G---, so he must
have meant how was I an oddity in Crete.  "Well, my first day there I
marched into the bakery and asked for a _psoli_.  The word for a loaf of
bread is _psomi_.  A _psoli_ is a penis."
        L-- laughed.  "Anybody could make a mistake like that."
        "Not more than once, I promise you."
        "Well, you were foreign.  People expect you to say a few dumb
things."
        "Oh, every day I did something wrong.  They had complicated rules
about who could talk to who and what you could say and who said it first.
Like, there were all these things you were supposed to do to avoid the
Evil Eye."
        "How do you do that?" he asked.  L-- was full of curiosity.
        "You wear this little amulet that looks like a blue eyeball.  But
the main thing is, you never _ever_ mention anything you're proud of.
It's this horrible social error to give somebody a compliment, because
you're attracting the attention of the Evil Eye.  So you say everything
backward.  When two mothers pass each other on the road carrying their
babies, one says to the other, 'Ugly baby!'  And the other one says,
'Yours also!'"
        L-- laughed a wonderful, loud laugh that made me think of Fenton
Lee, in high school.  Who'd died in the train wreck.
        "I swear to God it's true."
        "I believe you.  It's just funny how people are.  People in G-- do
that too, in a way.  You give them a compliment and they'll say, 'Oh, no,
that's just something I've had a long time.'  We're all too scared to be
happy about what we've got, for fear somebody'll notice and take it away."

Regarding Heinlein and female readers.  Read my first and only book by
him in my middle thirties.  Like Sara, I got two-thirds of the way through
and wound up throwing it against the wall.  Never finished it.  About
ten years later, read a biography of him which confirmed my opinion he is
not someone I would like to know.

#35 sounds _just_ like Jonathan Carroll, but it isn't in any of his books that
I've read.  What the heck, I'll guess him anyway.

Oh, I finished it, just got irritated with it.

Carroll is incorrect.  Out of curiosity, what has he written?

I have no clue, but I'll guess anyway. Norman Mailer?

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss