Robert M. Pirsig

"I think metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it."

"The Good was not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way."

"When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten."

"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."

"Told by the blurb that we have here "one of the most unique and exciting books in the history of American letters," one bridles both at the grammar of the claim and at its routine excess. The grammar stays irreparable. But I have a hunch that the assertion itself is valid... Zen and the Art is awkward both to live with and to write about. It lodges in the mind as few recent novels have, deepening its grip, compelling the landscape into unexpected planes of order and menace... the narrative tact, the perfect economy of effect, defy criticism... the analogies with Moby Dick are patent. Robert Pirsig invites the prodigious comparison... What more can one say?"

"The thing to understand is that if you are going to reform society you dont start with cops. And if you are going to reform intellect you dont start with psychiatrists. If you dont like our present social system or intellectual system the best thing you can do with either cops or psychiatrists is stay out of their way. You leave them till last."