Performance Anomalies Quotes

“If it’s not one god it’s another. Allah or oil. Jesus or Jewels. Lenin or lust.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“The people need a strong leader. They feel insecure if they don’t know who to fear. Isn’t that why god was invented?”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“A kite only flies if it’s tethered.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Lift your eyes, straighten your back, let fear and pain walk away like the turtles they are.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“To make a friend you must close one eye. And to keep a friend, you must close both eyes.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Ah, men losing the power in their dicks. When they can no longer f___ their women, they f___ the world.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Cono knew that all three of his tormentors would know the anthem by heart from their childhood years. They had sung it daily to belong to the elite of their country, wearing around their necks the red ties of the Communist Party Youth Brigade, which had formed their beings and all that they would be and would ever believe, even as communism became a ghost and the party a web of corruption.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Cono felt embarrassed by the thought that he might have been just another pitiful orphan trying to turn his friends into family, and that he might be blinded by this need, a need that colored his whole life, that ache to offer worth to someone.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“It’s a heavy responsibility, having saved someone’s life. You feel an allegiance because you saved them, but it’s hard to know if you did the right thing.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Hungry for what? Money? No. Power? Over people? That was like having power over clams.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“I know him by another name. His real one is Slem, not uncommon for men of his generation. It stands for Stalin Lenin Engels Marx. He's always making up new names for himself--wouldn't you?”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Beijing? Freedom? Oil and water.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“No person is just one person. Everyone is a crate of fruits, a crate of mixed fruits. The apple in there may have worms, a peach may be mildewed, a banana may be too green, a pear may be in perfect ripeness, and a melon may have the sweetest smell.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Imagine the joy of that - of not being beneath that big thumb. Imagine no longer being a beetle, but being a man.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Most men overestimate themselves. It’s the only way they can reproduce. It’s why we’re all here, us humans. Overestimation.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“I believe in the goddess of mystery. And she’s always pregnant!”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“In my country, when we think about the future, we shake.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“What took you so long? Waiting for Buddha?”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“History is running very fast in my country.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“And yet with that bleak horizon before her eyes, Katerina had said the first problem was the uranium. All the children dying. It came to that: women and their children. Even women and the children who did not belong to them. It was the only force in the world resisting the centrifugal destructive rage of men.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Your death rides a fast camel.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Todd was neuter, it seemed, except for the near-orgasmic pleasure he took from his formulas. Cono guessed that only a person who didn't really care for people could find personalities in equations, and friends in matrices. Todd spoke of data sets as if they were current or future lovers. Cono admired him for his ability to find joy beyond the secretory impulses that controlled most humans.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Freedom is hard to come by.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Why ruin the present by talking about the past?”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“After all, the whole of humanity was anchored by inventions, contrivances, unrealities. Xiao Li lived on dreams, as most people do.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Sounds like the rival is a good soldier, Cono said. Like the Russians say, a bad soldier is one who doesn't try to become a general.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Even now, I feel your arms around me
My breath is your breath and yours mine
Even now, I hear you laughing like bells ...
You sing to me and I sing to you
Dear child of my womb, my love,
Time has left us, left us forever together.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“He has freedom on his face.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“A pack of five dogs, as variable in size and shape as humans, trotted in a veering path toward the two men; they sniffed and growled and nipped at one another, then broke into a lope down the street, with the smallest mutt in the lead.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“She was like him, trying to embrace the moon while making her way in the world through instinct and drive that came only from within, because she had only herself.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies