Laffertys first full-length work is an event. As with everything the m — R. A. Lafferty

"The war was finished. It had lasted ten equivalent years and taken ten million lives. Thus it was neither of long duration nor of serious attrition. It hadnt any great significance; it was not intended to have. It did not prove a point, since all points had long ago been proven. What it did, perhaps, was to emphasize an aspect, sharpen a concept, underline a trend. On the whole it was a successful operation. Economically and ecologically it was of healthy effect, and who should grumble? And after wars, men go home. No, no, men start for home. Its not the same."

"For me, reading Lafferty was like looking into Chapman’s Homer. He interested me in SF again, after I had outgrown my early love for Simak and Asimov and Heinlein. What a word slinger: what a richness of idea and image, in Irish-cadenced prose! Lafferty wrote the opposite of the post-Chekhovian modern short story. Show don’t tell? The pleasure is in the telling. Rhetoric, in the grand old manner, was at the center of his game. He could go from high-faluting to just plain faluting, and back again, all in a paragraph. Like Charles Mingus, another American original, Lafferty loved the sounds he made; never satisfied with mere profundity, he was pretty, too. He was our Mingus, I think, elevating us all. And his stories always had a humanist agenda, though I understand he was a political conservative. … I believe his day is yet to come; that like Melville, Lafferty will be "discovered," and his Okla Hannali will take its rightful place as one of the three or four truly great 20th century American novels."

"“How quickly I could clean this desk,” she thought, “if only the wastebasket were larger.”"

"The Dong button was just that, a big green button with the word Dong engraved on it. You pushed it, and it went dong. Well, that was almost too simple. Should there not be a deeper reason for it? And the small instruction plate over it didn’t add much. It read: “Wrong prong, bong gong.”"

"The devils stroll the earth again and infect with the red sickness. They must, at all cost to themselves, destroy the growing tendrils before such can touch the other side. For, whenever one least growing creeper touches across the interval, that means the extinction of a devil. It is a thing to be tested. Notice it that whenever there is the special shrilling, when there is the wild flinging out of catchwords to catch you in, when there are the weird exceptions and inclusions, when there are specious arguments and the murderous defamations, when all the volubility of the voltairians and the cuteness of the queers has been assembled to confound you, then one green growth has almost reached across to the other side, one devil is in danger of extinction. Oh, they will defend against that!"

"When we travel we find how greatly our boyhood dreams are outstripped by reality."

"Since the Chernobyl accident, we have worked all over the globe to raise nuclear safety performance. And since the September 2001 terrorist attacks, we have worked with even greater intensity on nuclear security. On both fronts, we have built an international network of legal norms and performance standards. But our most tangible impact has been on the ground. Hundreds of missions, in every part of the world, with international experts making sure nuclear activities are safe and secure. I am very proud of the 2,300 hard working men and women that make up the IAEA staff — the colleagues with whom I share this honour. Some of them are here with me today. We come from over 90 countries. We bring many different perspectives to our work. Our diversity is our strength. We are limited in our authority. We have a very modest budget. And we have no armies. But armed with the strength of our convictions, we will continue to speak truth to power. And we will continue to carry out our mandate with independence and objectivity."

"The office is designed for "work," not productivity. Work can be defined as "anything youd rather not be doing." Productivity is a different matter. Telecommuting substitutes two hours of productivity for ten hours of work."

"He found his best satisfaction not in pleasure but in toil. He could live with little food, little sleep - and very little dalliance. The one thing he could not dispense with was work, and work in prodigious quantities."

"The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you."

"Open, ye heavens, your living doors; let in The great Creator from his work returnd Magnificent, his six days work, a world!"

"Work work, work, work, die. Youd think I was a protestant."