How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Actually, I am a very lucky person and I know it. I am about to marry a wonderful little girl. There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look. I am proof of that." (7.4)
Newt's head-over-heels for Zinka even though she doesn't seem to love him back. But, does that lessen the love he feels for her? Hmm, questions, questions….
Quote #2
"There was one where he bet I couldn't tell him anything that was absolutely true. So I said to him, 'God is love.'"
"And what did he say?"
"He said, 'What is God? What is love?'" (26.4-6)
Oh, Hoenikker, you poor man. With love being one of those non-knowledge based things, the good doctor is out of his depth here.
Quote #3
"And how can you say a man had a good mind when he couldn't even bother to do anything when the best-hearted, most beautiful woman in the world, his own wife, was dying for lack of love and understanding…" (33.8)
Hoenikker's inability to get love has consequences. Without love, your life is basically worthless.
Quote #4
While I didn't feel that purposeful seas were wafting me to San Lorenzo, I did feel that love was doing the job. The Fata Morgana, the mirage of what it would be like to be loved by Mona Aamons Monzano, had become a tremendous force in my meaningless life. (40.8)
The novel spells it out here: John may have real feelings for Mona, but any reciprocal feelings would just be Fata Morgana, a.k.a. a grand illusion.
Quote #5
[The Mintons] were, I think, a flawless example of what Bokonon calls a dupes, which is a karass composed of only two persons. (41.3)
The Mintons certainly love each other. Later in the novel, Mr. Minton's speech about death and war shows how that love resonates beyond the couple and into their worldview. Moral? Maybe start by loving the ones you're with.
Quote #6
"The highest possible form of treason," said Minton, "is to say that Americans aren't loved wherever they go, whatever they do. Claire tried to make the point that American foreign policy should recognize hate rather than imagine love." (45.3)
While loving your nation isn't bad in and of itself, Claire suggests that this love can be taken to a point where it's no good for anyone.
Quote #7
So I looked at the people she loved. What she had trapped in Plexiglas, what she had trapped like fossil beetles in amber, were the images of a large part of our karass. There wasn't a granfallooner in the collection.
Angela's brand of love is pretty suffocating. She loves her family, but her love seems to want to capture them at their best rather than let them be the people they are. But, as John points out, they are all members of the karass, so we can at least say the love is genuine.
Quote #8
"She broke my heart. I didn't like that much. But that was the price. In this world, you get what you pay for." (59.13)
Sure, Newt may be a cynic. But this is satire, and satire is nothing if not welcoming to cynics—even cynics in love. (And have you ever met a cynic who didn't have his heart broken?)
Quote #9
Tears filled [Mona's] eyes. She adored her promiscuity; was angered that I should try to make her feel shame. "I make people happy. Love is good, not bad." (93.26)
Mona may be the character with the most love to give in the novel. But she's also kind of cold and loveless at the same time. Man, this book doesn't give away anything easily.
Quote #10
I understood that each person had delivered himself to this melancholy place and then poisoned himself with ice-nine.
There were men, women, and children, too, many in the attitudes of boko-maru. (120.13)
Love and death come together in this scene with boko-maru symbolizing love. The question is, how much did love lessen the blow and pain of death in the end? Once again, the novel leaves us with that question and no answer. At least we're used to it by now.