For three days and three nights, Phædrus stares at the wall of the bedroom, his thoughts moving neither forward nor backward, staying only at the instant. His wife asks if he is sick, and he does not answer. His wife becomes angry, but Phædrus listens without responding. He is aware of what she says but is no longer able to feel any urgency about it. Not only are his thoughts slowing down, but his desires too. And they slow and slow, as if gaining an imponderable mass. So heavy, so tired, but no sleep comes. He feels like a giant, a million miles tall. He feels himself extending into the universe with no limit. He begins to discard things, encumbrances that he has carried with him all his life. He tells his wife to leave with the children, to consider themselves separated. Fear of loathsomeness and shame disappear when his urine flows not deliberately but naturally on the floor of the room. Fear of pain, the pain of the martyrs is overcome when cigarettes burn not deliberately but naturally down into his fingers until they are extinguished by blisters formed by their own heat. His wife sees his injured hands and the urine on the floor and calls for help. But before help comes, slowly, imperceptibly at first, the entire consciousness of Phædrus begins to come apart – to dissolve and fade away. Then gradually he no longer wonders what will happen next. He knows what will happen next, and tears flow for his family and for himself and for this world. Robert Pirsig
About This Quote

It took three days and three nights for the protagonist of this first-person narrative to come apart. Each day he started to see the world differently, and each night it took him longer and longer to fall asleep. Each night he was more awake than he had been all day, and as his mind slowed down, its contents became clearer and more distinct. His thoughts began to change as well, becoming less about himself and more about the universe around him.

At first, each night's sleep took longer and longer to fall away, but eventually he couldn't sleep at all. He would wake up every morning and find that his conscious awareness had grown even larger than it had been before. Every day he was more and more like a giant, a million miles tall.

And as his consciousness continued to grow, so did his awareness of what was happening around him. He began to notice things he hadn't noticed before: how his mind was slowly dissolving into the universe; how his body looked like an old man's; how his wife looked like a young girl; how the children looked like animals; how the house looked like an old mansion; how small everything looked; how everything smelled of urine. Then one day he realized that he didn't care if anything happened or not: not for himself or for anyone else.

He just wanted to know what time it was: that what will happen next: that when?

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More Quotes By Robert Pirsig
  1. For three days and three nights, Phædrus stares at the wall of the bedroom, his thoughts moving neither forward nor backward, staying only at the instant. His wife asks if he is sick, and he does not answer. His wife becomes angry, but Phædrus listens...
  2. The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do.
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