Quotations from *Behold the Man*
Michael Moorcock
1939- English

Lying in the hot, sweaty bed with Monica. Once again, another attempt to make normal love had metamorphosed into the performance of minor aberrations, which seemed to satisfy her better than anything else.

Their real courtship and fulfillment was yet to come. As usual, it would be verbal. As usual, it would find its climax in argumentative anger.
—Michael Moorcock, Behold the Man

It was strange. He was not a religious man in the usual sense. He was an agnostic. It was not conviction that had led him to defend religion against Monica’s cynical contempt for it; it was rather lack of conviction in the ideal in which she had set her own faith, the ideal of science as a solver of all problems.
—Michael Moorcock, Behold the Man

“I can’t accept it.”

“That’s because you’re sick. I’m sick, too, but at least I can see the promise of health.”

“I can only see the threat of death...”
—Michael Moorcock, Behold the Man

“O Captain! My Captain!”
Walt Whitman
1819-1892 American

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Quotations

Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country... Let every bookworm, when in any fragrant, scarce, old tome he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?
—Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.
—Oscar Wilde

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
—Samuel Johnson

It is rather to be chosen than great riches, unless I have omitted something from the quotation.
—Robert Benchley

“Epigram”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1772-1834 English

Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool,
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.

“The Use of Force”
William Carlos Williams
1883-1963 American

They were new patients to me, all I had was the name, Olson. Please come down as soon as you can, my daughter is very sick.

When I arrived I was met by the mother, a big startled looking woman, very clean and apologetic who merely said, Is this the doctor? and let me in. In the back, she added. You must excuse us, doctor, we have her in the kitchen where it is warm. It is very damp here sometimes.

The child was fully dressed and sitting on her father's lap near the kitchen table. He tried to get up, but I motioned for him not to bother, took off my overcoat and started to look things over. I could see that they were all very nervous, eyeing me up and down distrustfully. As often, in such cases, they weren't telling me more than they had to, it was up to me to tell them; that's why they were spending three dollars on me.

The child was fairly eating me up with her cold, steady eyes, and no expression to her face whatever. She did not move and seemed, inwardly, quiet; an unusually attractive little thing, and as strong as a heifer in appearance. But her face was flushed, she was breathing rapidly, and I realized that she had a high fever. She had magnificent blonde hair, in profusion. One of those picture children often reproduced in advertising leaflets and the photogravure sections of the Sunday papers.

She's had a fever for three days, began the father and we don't know what it comes from. My wife has given her things, you know, like people do, but it don't do no good. And there's been a lot of sickness around. So we tho't you'd better look her over and tell us what is the matter.

As doctors often do I took a trial shot at it as a point of departure. Has she had a sore throat?

Both parents answered me together, No... No, she says her throat don't hurt her.

Does your throat hurt you? added the mother to the child. But the little girl's expression didn't change nor did she move her eyes from my face.

Have you looked?

I tried to, said the mother, but I couldn't see.

As it happens we had been having a number of cases of diphtheria in the school to which this child went during that month and we were all, quite apparently, thinking of that, though no one had as yet spoken of the thing.

Well, I said, suppose we take a look at the throat first. I smiled in my best professional manner and asking for the child's first name I said, come on, Mathilda, open your mouth and let's take a look at your throat.

Nothing doing.

Aw, come on, I coaxed, just open your mouth wide and let me take a look. Look, I said opening both hands wide, I haven't anything in my hands. Just open up and let me see.

Such a nice man, put in the mother. Look how kind he is to you. Come on, do what he tells you to. He won't hurt you.

At that I ground my teeth in disgust. If only they wouldn't use the word "hurt" I might be able to get somewhere. But I did not allow myself to be hurried or disturbed but speaking quietly and slowly I approached the child again.

As I moved my chair a little nearer suddenly with one catlike movement both her hands clawed instinctively for my eyes and she almost reached them too. In fact she knocked my glasses flying and they fell, though unbroken, several feet away from me on the kitchen floor.

Both the mother and father almost turned themselves inside out in embarrassment and apology. You bad girl, said the mother, taking her and shaking her by one arm. Look what you've done. The nice man...

For heaven's sake, I broke in. Don't call me a nice man to her. I'm here to look at her throat on the chance that she might have diphtheria and possibly die of it. But that's nothing to her. Look here, I said to the child, we're going to look at your throat. You're old enough to understand what I'm saying. Will you open it now by yourself or shall we have to open it for you?

Not a move. Even her expression hadn't changed. Her breaths however were coming faster and faster. Then the battle began. I had to do it. I had to have a throat culture for her own protection. But first I told the parents that it was entirely up to them. I explained the danger but said that I would not insist on a throat examination so long as they would take the responsibility.

If you don't do what the doctor says you'll have to go to the hospital, the mother admonished her severely.

Oh yeah? I had to smile to myself. After all, I had already fallen in love with the savage brat, the parents were contemptible to me. In the ensuing struggle they grew more and more abject, crushed, exhausted while she surely rose to magnificent heights of insane fury of effort bred of her terror of me.

The father tried his best, and he was a big man but the fact that she was his daughter, his shame at her behavior and his dread of hurting her made him release her just at the critical times when I had almost achieved success, till I wanted to kill him. But his dread also that she might have diphtheria made him tell me to go on, go on though he himself was almost fainting, while the mother moved back and forth behind us raising and lowering her hands in an agony of apprehension.

Put her in front of you on your lap, I ordered, and hold both her wrists.

But as soon as he did the child let out a scream. Don't, you're hurting me. Let go of my hands. Let them go I tell you. Then she shrieked terrifyingly, hysterically. Stop it! Stop it! You're killing me!

Do you think she can stand it, doctor! said the mother.

You get out, said the husband to his wife. Do you want her to die of diphtheria?

Come on now, hold her, I said.

Then I grasped the child's head with my left hand and tried to get the wooden tongue depressor between her teeth. She fought, with clenched teeth, desperately! But now I also had grown furious--at a child. I tried to hold myself down but I couldn't. I know how to expose a throat for inspection. And I did my best. When finally I got the wooden spatula behind the last teeth and just the point of it into the mouth cavity, she opened up for an instant but before I could see anything she came down again and gripping the wooden blade between her molars she reduced it to splinters before I could get it out again.

Aren't you ashamed, the mother yelled at her. Aren't you ashamed to act like that in front of the doctor?

Get me a smooth-handled spoon of some sort, I told the mother. We're going through with this. The child's mouth was already bleeding. Her tongue was cut and she was screaming in wild hysterical shrieks. Perhaps I should have desisted and come back in an hour or more. No doubt it would have been better. But I have seen at least two children lying dead in bed of neglect in such cases, and feeling that I must get a diagnosis now or never I went at it again. But the worst of it was that I too had got beyond reason. I could have torn the child apart in my own fury and enjoyed it. It was a pleasure to attack her. My face was burning with it.

The damned little brat must be protected against her own idiocy, one says to one's self at such times. Others must be protected against her. It is a social necessity. And all these things are true. But a blind fury, a feeling of adult shame, bred of a longing for muscular release are the operatives. One goes on to the end.

In a final unreasoning assault I overpowered the child's neck and jaws. I forced the heavy silver spoon back of her teeth and down her throat till she gagged. And there it was--both tonsils covered with membrane. She had fought valiantly to keep me from knowing her secret. She had been hiding that sore throat for three days at least and lying to her parents in order to escape just such an outcome as this.

Now truly she was furious. She had been on the defensive before but now she attacked. Tried to get off her father's lap and fly at me while tears of defeat blinded her eyes.

Quotations from *The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia*, 1 of 6
Nick Middleton
British

The country has developed quickly since 1921, when the revolutionary leader Sukhe Bator rode into Mongolia with a Soviet Red Army back-up. From that date the country has embraced Communism, and in doing so has necessitated a rewrite of the Marxist-Leninist textbooks, because the pre-revolutionary country had never left the ‘feudal’ state. Thus, the phrase that lingers on the tip of every Mongolian interpreter was born: Mongolia had ‘bypassed capitalism’. It is this rapid shift from old to new that gives today’s Mongolia its mystical air as a sort of People’s Republic of Shangri-La.
—Nick Middleton, The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia

Just outside the airport a Chinese-looking gateway straddles the road and the Cyrillic script on the large hoarding beside it proclaims the entrance to the city. But as we drove through the arch the view all around was the same one of grassy treeless hills with not a soul in sight.
—Nick Middleton, The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia

I opened the windows, double frames against the bitter continental winter, and surveyed the city. Across the park outside the hotel the valley hills were fading fast at the end of the day. The neon sign on the building opposite flickered into life. In my Western ignorance I imagined it to be advertising a shop. Later I discovered it said: ‘Let’s make our capital a good socialist city.’
—Nick Middleton, The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia

Mongolia is waking up from its long history of domination by foreign powers. It is probably fair to say that today the country is looking forward to a future which will be more autonomous than at any time in the seven centuries since Genghis Khan, their national hero who has been resurrected from a shady Communist past, to be revered once more as a symbol of truly Mongolian independence.
—Nick Middleton, The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia

The declaration of Mongolia’s independence in 1911 had encountered a problem: it was ignored.
—Nick Middleton, The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia

“How Do I Love Thee?”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1806-1861 English

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Quotations from *The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia*, 2 of 6
Nick Middleton
British

Her eyes wandered back to the screen of a television set on the other side of the landing. It was surrounded by a dozen or so students, all in track suits and all from North Korea. They were engrossed in what I assumed to be a comedy programme, judging from the laughter and chuckles coming from their ranks. I followed the floor hostess’s gaze and looked at the TV set. The programme was showing graphic footage of a seal cull in the Arctic.
—Nick Middleton, The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia

‘Listen to this for a reasoned explanation of why the socialists did away with the Mongolian alphabet: “In the final analysis, life demonstrated the expediency of using the Russian alphabet.”

‘Life demonstrated the expediency?’ I repeated.

‘Sure,’ replied Bulcsu. ‘What he means is that if you didn’t change to Cyrillic they shot you. Really very simple.’

We both laughed but Bulcsu had not been joking.
—Nick Middleton, The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia

We chatted in English about the Russian influence in Mongolia. Norbu told us he could take us to see the Russian military camp, tucked away up a side valley, and there was a gold mine on the outskirts of Ulan Bator from which the refined gold was flown out to the Soviet Union every night on a special jet.
—Nick Middleton, The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia

To say that Mongolian Buddhism has taken a bit of a pasting in the years after the Revolution is an understatement: it was almost totally annihilated.
—Nick Middleton, The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia

‘...The march of time would sort everything out. Once the Revolution had taken place, once Communist parties were in power, once collectivisation had been accomplished, once the means of production were in the hands of the self-appointed representatives of the people, then religion would disappear of its own accord. The fact that this train of events simply didn’t happen threw the Communists into disarray. Their reaction to the obvious failure of their ideology was predictable. They couldn’t admit failure, so they resorted to violence.’

‘Reach for the revolver,’ I chipped in.

‘Well, reach for the armoured cars, the high explosives and the entire Soviet Army if necessary, more like,’ Bulcsu replied. ‘Of course the Mongolians never acted without good advice from Moscow, but the ultimate fate of Buddhism in Mongolia was sealed because the theory that said it would disappear was wrong, and yet it had to be proved right.’
—Nick Middleton, The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia

“Not Marble Nor the Gilded Monuments”
Archibald MacLeish
1892-1982 American

The praisers of women in their proud and beautiful poems,
Naming the grave mouth and the hair and the eyes,
Boasted those they loved should be forever remembered:
These were lies.

The words sound but the face in the Istrian sun is forgotten.
The poet speaks but to her dead ears no more.
The sleek throat is gone -- and the breast that was troubled to listen:
Shadow from door.

Therefore I will not praise your knees nor your fine walking
Telling you men shall remember your name as long
As lips move or breath is spent or the iron of English
Rings from a tongue.

I shall say you were young, and your arms straight, and your mouth scarlett:
I shall say you will die and none will remember you:
Your arms change, and none remember the swish of your garments,
Nor the click of your shoe.

Not with my hand's strength, not with difficult labor
Springing the obstinate words to the bones of your breast
And the stubborn line to your young stride and the breath to your breathing
And the beat to your haste
Shall I prevail on the hearts of unborn men to remember.

(What is a dead girl but a shadowy ghost
Or a dead man's voice but a distant and vain affirmation
Like dream words most)

Therefore I will not speak of the undying glory of women.
I will say you were young and straight and your skin fair
And you stood in the door and the sun was a shadow of leaves on your shoulders
And a leaf on your hair --

I will not speak of the famous beauty of dead women:
I will say the shape of a leaf lay once on your hair.
Till the world ends and the eyes are out and the mouths broken
Look! It is there!