How we cite our quotes: (Part.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Touch me, touch me. It was that, and a great swelling of emotion behind it: it was a hunger, a demand, a flood of sweetness and of need. (1.5.7)
Is it Valentine's Day? This passage describes the telepathic call between Evelyn and Lone. It can be taken as a fundamental expression of how More Than Human pictures what friendship is meant to fulfill. Touch, feeding, and sweetness are all specific ways friends fill each other's needs in this book.
Quote #2
Evelyn said, "What is it called when a person needs a . . . person . . . when you want to be touched and the . . . two are like one thing and there isn't anything else at all anywhere?"
Alicia, who had read books, thought about it. "Love," she said at length. She swallowed. "It's a madness. It's bad."
Evelyn's quiet face was suffused with a kind of wisdom. "It isn't bad," she said. "I had it." (1.8.14-16)
Evelyn's first sentence, which occurs very early in the book, sets the stage for friendship to be the force that joins the gestalt individuals together into one life form as the novel progresses. As The Beatles once said, all you need is love.
Quote #3
Lone built the device. He did it, not because he was particularly interested in the thing for itself, nor because he wished to understand its principles [...], but only because an old man who had taught him something he could not name was mad with bereavement and needed to work and could not afford a horse. (1.28.36)
One way More Than Human sees friendship is as a form of mutual aid or support. The Prodds nurtured Lone, so now he wants to give back by helping the old man move his truck without an expensive horse. Lone creates an anti-gravity generator in the process—and in opposition to much of science fiction, the specifics of the gee-whiz gadget take a back seat in light of the emotions being explored and expressed.
Quote #4
And borrow any thing you want if you should want any Thing. You are a good boy you been a good frend well goodbeye until I see you if I ever do god Bless you your old frend E. Prodd. (1.29.9)
This passage comes from a poorly spelled note—we promise we didn't misspell it—Mr. Prodd left for Lone just before the farmer headed toward Pennsylvania. Lone finds it after leaving the anti-gravity generator for him. The note shows that despite the Prodds "shucking" Lone off when he was in Jack's way, the two men's relationship ended as one of friendship, sharing and supporting one another. Awwww.
Quote #5
"Ask Baby what is a friend."
"He says it's somebody who goes on loving you whether he likes you or not." (1.29.12-13)
More Than Human sure likes to define words. Here's Baby's definition of a friend, in response to Lone's question. It's pretty much the exact opposite of what's meant by a fair-weather friend.
Quote #6
"Ask Baby can you be truly part of someone you love."
"He says only if you love yourself." (1.29.15-16)
Another question from Lone for the know-it-all infant. And Baby gives a classic answer.
Quote #7
His bench-mark, his goal-point, had for years been that thing which happened to him on the bank of the pool. He had to understand that. If he could understand that, he was sure he could understand everything. Because for a second there was this other, and himself, and a flow between them without guards or screens or barriers—no language to stumble over, no ideas to misunderstand, nothing at all but a merging." (1.29.17)
Lone ponders Baby's statement that only those who love themselves can be part of people they love. His moment with Evelyn by the pool allowed him to emotionally commune with someone else for the first time. Before her, he was too locked up inside himself to even know himself, let alone love himself.
Quote #8
"Gerry, you can live here. I don't come from no school. I'll never turn you in."
"Yeah, huh?"
"He hates you," said Janie.
"What am I supposed to do about that?" he wanted to know.
Janie turned her head to look into the bassinet. "Feed him." (2.2.87-91)
Lone and the kids try to win the hateful Gerry over in this passage. Providing someone a meal has been a basic offering of friendship across cultures for centuries. The way to a guy's heart is through his stomach, after all.
Quote #9
Bleshing, that was Janie's word. She said Baby told it to her. She said it meant everyone all together being something, even if they all did different things. Two arms, two legs, one body, one head, all working together, although a head can't walk and arms can't think. Lone said maybe it was a mixture of "blending" and "meshing," but I don't think he believed that himself. It was a lot more than that. (2.4.3)
Imagine a rock-and-roll band improvising together, forming a whole that is greater than the sum of its individuals without anyone losing their identity, and you have a picture of bleshing. This is the way the people of the gestalt collaborate, and it requires a camaraderie sort of friendship to happen.
Quote #10
"Not what you think, not love at first sight. That's childish; love's a different sort of thing, hot enough to make you flow into something, interflow, cool and anneal and be a weld stronger than what you started with." (3.14.86)
This is Janie's definition of love. It's what Lone and Evelyn had when they merged.