Barry Hughart Quotes

Fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.

Blessed are the idiots, for they are happiest people on earth.

...Men cannot come any closer to immortality without going insane.

The emotional health of a village depended upon having a man whom everyone loved to hate, and Heaven had blessed us with two of them.

The supernatural can be very annoying until one finds the key that transforms it into science," he observed mildly ... "Come on, Ox, let's go out and get killed.

Key Rabbit, allow me to bore you with a comparison of your wife and a beautiful woman," I said. "In the morning a beauty must lie in bed for three or four hours gathering strength for another mighty battle with Nature. Then, after being bathed and toweled by her maids, she loosens her hair in the Cascade of Teasing Willows Style, paints her eyebrows in the Distant Mountain Range Style, anoints herself with the Nine Bends of the River Diving-water Perfume, applies rouge, mascara, and eye shadow, and covers the whole works with a good two inches of the Powder of the Nonchalant Approach. Then she dresses in a plum-blossom patterned tunic with matching skirt and stockings, adds four or five pounds of jewelry, looks in the mirror for any visible sign of humanity and is relieved to find none, checks her makeup to be sure that it has hardened into an immovable mask, sprinkles herself with the Hundred Ingredients Perfume of the Heavenly Spirits who Descended in the Rain Shower, and minces with tiny steps toward the new day. Which, like any other day, will consist of gossip and giggles.

Our senses are woefully limited. Our brains are but tiny candles flickering in an infinity of darkness. Our only wisdom is to admit that we cannot understand, and since we cannot understand we must do the best we can with faith. which is our only talent. The greatest act of faith we are capable of is that of loving another more than we love ourselves, and occasionally we can be quite good at it.

Immortality is a meaningless word unless invulnerability goes with it.

A fool will study for twenty or thirty years and learn how to do something, but a wise man will study for twenty or thirty minutes and become an expert. In this world, it isn't ability that counts, but authority.

I used to love history class. I can still quote whole passages by heart: "When the emperor entered the Hall of Balming Virtue, a violent wind came from a dark corner, and out of it slithered a giant serpent that coiled around the throne. The emperor fainted, and that night earthquakes struck Loyang, and waves swept the shores, and cranes shrieked in the marshes. On the fifth day of the sixth moon a long trail of black mist floated into the Hall of Concubines, and hot and cold became confused, and a hen turned into a rooster, and a woman turned into a man, and flesh fell from the skies." Now, that is grand stuff, just the thing to give to growing boys, and then we were old enough to read the greatest of all historians. This is what Ssu-ma Ch'ien had to say about the exact same subject: "The Chou Dynasty was nearing collapse." Bah.

To cherish perfection is to commit creative suicide, and every true artist knows that a masterpiece is an accident that should be burned.

Nothing on the face of this earth - and I do mean nothing - is half so dangerous as a children's story that happens to be real...

Mystery and terror are the bulwarks of tyranny.

Boy, just look at the soul shining through my eyes! It's like a goddamned flower!

It was quite a shock for me to discover that crime was so easy that it was boring. I reluctantly turned to scholarship.

Master Li, how are we going to murder a man who laughs at axes?" I asked.
We are going to experiment, dear boy. Our first order of business will be to find a deranged alchemist, which should not be very difficult. China," said Master Li, "is overstocked with deranged alchemists.

Miser Shen is preparing to spend the night with a goat.

'O great and mighty Master Li, pray impart to me the Secret of Wisdom!' he bawled.
'Take a large bowl,' I said. 'Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, logic, and lunacy. Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization, bellow kan pei - which means "dry cup" - and drink to the dregs.'
Procopius stared at me. 'And I will be wise?' he asked.
'Better,' I said. 'You will be Chinese.'

Ox, what occupation is most closely linked to insanity?'
'Emperor,' I said promptly.

Don't be ashamed of reliving your childhood, Ox, because all of us must do it now and then to maintain our sanity.

'Immortality is only for the gods,' he whispered. 'I wonder how they can stand it.'

Master Li turned bright red while he scorched the air with the Sixty Sequential Sacrileges with which he had won the all-China Freestyle Blasphemy Competition in Hangchow three years in a row.

Everybody knows that the soul of a cat is formed from the composite souls of nine debauched nuns who failed in their vows.

Show me a quest for personal immortality and I'll show you a path through a slaughterhouse, and the incense of personal divinity is the stench of other people's corpses.

The mind is a miser," he said. "Nothing is ever thrown away, and it's amazing what you can find if you dig deep enough.