I sometimes think that normal, everyday life is only a delusion. We walk on a think crust of earth which we call peace; and every now and again we can hear a rumble below our feet; and sometimes the crust splits and we see that, underneath there is a glowing inferno ready to erupt. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but it is always there. Helen MacInnes
About This Quote

In this quote, Kurt Vonnegut is saying that life can be a burden, and that it is often better to simply not worry about the day-to-day world. He uses the metaphor of a thin layer of ice on a pond, which represents the world as we know it, and underneath that thin layer is a burning inferno. This is a very dark and pessimistic view of the world, but it is an honest one.

Source: Decision At Delphi

Some Similar Quotes
  1. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you,... - Pablo Neruda
  2. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. - Pablo Neruda
  3. We love the things we love for what they are. - Robert Frost
  4. I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart) I am never without it (anywhereI go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my... - E.e. Cummings
  5. Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet. - Plato
More Quotes By Helen MacInnes
  1. There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.
  2. Romance is very pretty in novels, but the romance of a life is always a melancholy matter. They are most happy who have no story to tell.
  3. I sometimes think you despise poetry, ' said Phineas. 'When it is false I do. The difficulty is to know when it is false and when it is true.
  4. A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.
  5. I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung...
Related Topics