It’s a Puritan reflex of seeking other orders behind the visible, also known as paranoia.

•Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973).

haljohnsonbooks.substack.com/p/a-garland-of…

He was better than average. He could read and write, and had never eaten a child of his own.
•Daniel Pinkwater, Fish Whistle (1989).

haljohnsonbooks.substack.com/p/a-garland-of…

You talk like a Rosicrucian, who will love nothing but a sylph, who does not believe in the existence of a sylph, and who yet quarrels with the whole universe for not containing a sylph.
•Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey (1818).

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The caress of the eye over the skin is so utterly, so extraordinarily gentle, and the sensation is so bizarre that it has something of a rooster’s horrible crowing.
•Georges Bataille, The Story of the Eye (1928).

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Beauteous is Earth, but all its forest-broods
Plot mutual slaughter, hungering to live.
•Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia (1879).

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For none cast stones at trees save fruit be there.
•Sâdi, The Rose Garden (1258).

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A woman of ninety said to M. de Fontenelle, then ninety-five: “Death has forgotten us.” “Hush!” replied M. de Fontenelle, putting his finger to his lips.
•Nicholas Chamfort, Maxims, Thoughts, Characters and Anecdotes (1796).

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(NEW TODAY!)

…Think ’t the best voyage
That e’er you made; like the irregular crab,
Which, though ’t goes backward, thinks that it goes right
Because it goes its own way.
•John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (c. 1613).

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“O father, do not turn me into a tadpole!”

“I will not, but I will turn thee out of doors.”

And he did.

•Richard Garnett, “The Poison Kiss” (1888).

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Someone arrived with an accordion and struck up as dance for the elephants
I am the meteor which plummets from the nipples of the moon

•Richard Huelsenbeck, “The Cylinder Gable” (1916).

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A wealthy man’s undertakingsAre elephant fights witnessed from a hill.

•Thiruvalluvar, Tirukkural (undateable).

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Everything, even lies, advances the truth. Shadows do not blot out the sun.

•Kafka, quoted in Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka (1953).

haljohnsonbooks.substack.com/p/a-garland-of…

How can you have a Utopia without utopians, a Golden World with men of brass?

•Philip José Farmer, “Riders of the Purple Wage” (1967).

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Q.: How are the sides of a triangle like Belle’s looks?
haljohnsonbooks.substack.com/p/terrible-pun…

Come visit me here…if you dare etc.

If you want to see a bunch of crybaby losers gnashing their teeth, check out the Goodreads one-star reviews of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

If you like weird books, I wrote about five weird books, 1769–2020: open.substack.com/pub/haljohnson…

Actually, I wrote it even if you don't like weird books, but if you don't like weird books, just don't follow the link.