How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"The Buddha and his words are an abomination in the eyes of the gods."
"But why?"
"He is a bomb-throwing anarchist, a hairy-eyed revolutionary. He seeks to pull down Heaven itself." (5.160-162)
Potato, potato. Tomato, tomato… those are supposed to be pronounced differently. Our point is: The same symbol can be one person's salvation and another's bomb-throwing anarchy, in the same way that the same word can have more than one pronunciation.
Quote #8
"The only other things he cares about in those cities are souls, not bodies. He will move across the land destroying every symbol of our religion that he comes upon, until we choose to carry the fight to him. If we do nothing, he will probably then send in missionaries." (7.218)
When we read this, we thought to ourselves: If you destroy all the symbols of a religion—and we mean all the symbols—can you effectively destroy the religion? What do you think?
Quote #9
"Yours was the power to lay a belief upon them. You are what you claimed to be."
"I lied. I never believed in it myself, and I still don't. I could just as easily have chosen another way —" (7.279-280)
Sam says he lied when he said he was the Buddha. But has his lie become the truth? Has he become the symbol he said he was but never believed he was? Yes? No? We're going with maybe.