The Lathe of Heaven Love Quotes

Crash clank! went the lawyer's bracelets. The contrast amused Haber: the harsh fierce woman, the meek characterless man. They had nothing in common at all. (5.24)

An irrelevant and poignant sensation of pleasure rose in him, like a tree that grew up and flowered all in one moment with its roots in his loins and its flowers in his mind. (6.13)

The one lived among seven billion others, where the food, such as it was, was never enough. Where an egg was the luxury of the month —"Today we ovulate!" his halfwife had used to say when she bought their egg ration.... Curious, in this life they hadn't had a trial marriage, he and Donna. There was no such thing, legally speaking, in the post-Plague years. There was full marriage only. In Utah, since the birth rate was still lower than the death rate, they were even trying to reinstitute polygamous marriage, for religious and patriotic reasons. But he and Donna hadn't had any kind of marriage this time, they had just lived together. But still it hadn't lasted. (6.39)

Briefly she saw him thus, and what struck her most, of that insight, was his strength. He was the strongest person she had ever known, because he could not be moved away from the center. And that was why she liked him. She was drawn to strength, came to it as a moth to light. She had had a good deal of love as a kid but no strength around her, nobody to lean on ever: people had leaned on her. Thirty years she had longed to meet somebody who didn't lean on her, who wouldn't ever, who couldn't....

Here, short, bloodshot, psychotic, and in hiding, here he was, her tower of strength.

Life is the most incredible mess, Heather thought. (7.51)

"That's it. Listen, you know the war—the war in the Near East?"

"Sure I know it. My husband was killed in it."

"Your husband?" He looked stricken. "When?"

"Just three days before they called it off. Two days before the Teheran Conference and the U.S.-China Pact. One day after the Aliens blew up the Moon base."

He was looking at her as if appalled.

"What's wrong? Oh, hell, it's an old scar. Six years ago, nearly seven. And if he'd lived we'd have been divorced by now, it was a lousy marriage. Look, it wasn't your fault!"

"I don't know what is my fault any more." (7.78)

Haber considered himself a lone wolf. He had never wanted marriage nor close friendships, he had chosen a strenuous research carried out when others sleep, he had avoided entanglements. He kept his sex life almost entirely to one-night stands, semipros, sometimes women and sometimes young men; he knew which bars and cinemas and saunas to go to for what he wanted. He got what he wanted and got clear again, before he or the other person could possibly develop any kind of need for the other. He prized his independence, his free will. (8.6)

"One swallow does not make a summer," it said. "Many hands make light work." It stopped again, apparently not satisfied with this effort at bridging the communication gap. It stood still for half a minute, then went to the front window and with precise, stiff, careful movements picked out one of the antique disk-records displayed there, and brought it to Orr. It was a Beatles record: "With a Little Help from My Friends." (10.24)

At dinner George watched her; she watched him a good bit, too. They had been married seven months. They said nothing of any importance. They washed up the dishes and went to bed. In bed, they made love. Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new. When it was made, they lay in each other's arms, holding love, asleep. In her sleep Heather heard the roaring of a creek full of the voices of unborn children singing. (10.49)

"Help me," he said aloud, for the void drew him, pulled at him. He had not the strength all by himself to get through nothingness and out the other side.

There was a sort of dull rousing in his mind; he thought of Tiua'k Ennbe Ennbe, and of the bust of Schubert, and of Heather's voice saying furiously, "What the hell, George!" This seemed to be all he had to cross nothingness on. He went forward. He knew as he went that he would lose all he had. (10.153)

He would have preferred less of a mess himself, but it wasn't up to him. And at least it had her in it. He had sought her as best he could, had not found her, and had turned to his work for solace; it had not given much, but it was the work he was fit to do, and he was a patient man. But now his dry and silent grieving for his lost wife must end, for there she stood, the fierce, recalcitrant, and fragile stranger, forever to be won again. (11.54)