Ryan Ruby > Quotes

“... he longed
for the day when every church would be converted into a bar, or at least a
cinema.”
― Ryan Ruby, The Zero and the One

“So we talked about the weather and did the one thing we all knew how to do: get pissed. I watched stupendous bar bills turn into group song and shoving matches and urine and vomit well before the pubs closed their doors at eleven. One day, I thought, standing outside the toilet of a dodgy dance club, waiting for one of my new acquaintances to finish retching, one of these tossers is going to get himself elected to Parliament.”
― Ryan Ruby, The Zero and the One

“Lesson learnt: you can get away with anything, no matter how daft, if you can do it without flinching.”
― Ryan Ruby, The Zero and the One

“It’s pure hypocrisy! People call others selfish for not doing what they want them to do. They hate it when other people’s selfishness
gets in the way of their own. It’s not at all surprising that the hypocrites who accuse suicides of being selfish also accuse them of being cowardly. Living solely for other people—you know what I call that? Slavery. And there’s nothing more cowardly than choosing to be a slave.”
― Ryan Ruby, The Zero and the One

“Any doctrine that posits the hatred of physical life, will be incapable of dealing rationally with the problem of suicide. Socrates’ argument in the Phaedo, that suicide is a form of vandalism against the gift of the gods, is hardly satisfying. Why should a pious man be grateful for his corporeality, when this is precisely what separates him from the gods in the first place?
Christianity’s problem is particularly acute. After all, if the Nazarene is the Son of God, with prophetic powers, the Christian object of worship is nothing other than—a suicide.”
― Ryan Ruby, The Zero and the One

“The fantastical etchings of
galleons sailing off the edge of the flat earth and toppling headlong
into the void, are more accurate representations of our lived
experience than the spherical empirical truth in which we happen to
live.”
― Ryan Ruby, The Zero and the One

“... he longed for the day when every church would be converted into a bar, or at least a
cinema. Houses of dissolution and spectacle, in his view, were the only suitable futures for the former offices of illusion.”
― Ryan Ruby, The Zero and the One