Alien Invasion Quotes

I would kill for a cheeseburger. Honestly. If I stumbled across someone eating a cheeseburger, I would kill them for it.

In case you're an alien and you're reading this: BITE ME.

Why did they come billions of miles just to stare at us? It's rude.

Every sickness has an alien quality, a feeling of invasion and loss of control that is evident in the language we use about it.

He sounds like a politician running for office.

Then the door flew open and Mr. Faulks told us to head over to the gym. I thought that was really smart. Get all of us in one place so the aliens didn't have to waste a lot of ammunition.

One alien is a curiosity, two are an invasion.

He will tell you what's wrong in your society, who's to blame, and make you afraid of it, but he won't tell you how to fix it.

What you or I would recognize as an alien invasion by tentacled horrors from beyond spacetime Angleton would see as a teachable moment.

If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans.” - Stephen Hawking

We always assumed the aliens would have to at least be alive to invade. Not even H.G. Wells expected an invasion of ghosts.

She burst into her hotel room pulling her blouse over her head with one hand while she yanked her shoes off with the other. No way was she going to face an alien invasion in heels and silk.

Task complete. Shut it down." Unable to comply, the computer responded. "I finished." Inaccurate statement. Previous command stipulated all listed reports and evaluations must be complete before system rest. This command by Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, priority basis, can only be countermanded at her order by fire, terrorist attack, alien invasion or an open and active case requiring her attention ... Jesus, had she really programmed that? "I changed my mind." Previous command specifies changes of mind, fatigue, boredom, and other lame excuses not acceptable for countermand ... "Bite me," Eve muttered.

Mr. Williams, in your short time boarding with us you’ve seen very little of my home,” Eleanor said. “I’d like you to see the rest of it, starting with my bedroom.

But when it finally did happen, the alien invasion turned out to be much more like Mr. Looney of the Tunes than Mr. Ridley of the Scott. Point to Nani.

It took me all day to get that car out. Well, it wasn’t a car. That’s just what I thought it might be when I spotted part of it jutting out from decades of forest undergrowth, and moss, inside a mound of blackberry bushes.

In science fiction books characters always seem to have a weapon that can be set on stun. Do you have anything like that?” I asked. GERI laughed. He was getting better at it. “Yes, Tom, I have something like that.

That got to me. I wasn’t communicating with a computer. Inside this machine was a sophisticated, self-aware intelligence, and it wanted me to be its friend.

In the 4th Wave, you can't trust that people are still people. But you can trust that your gun is still your gun.

Riley Bay wasn’t human. But if he wasn’t human, then what was he? An alien, sent to Earth to learn about humanity in preparation for an invasion? Riley was certainly weird enough to be an alien, but I didn’t see why the mother ship would send him to Portsmouth, Rhode Island, in the guise of a high schooler.

Noah gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Just out of curiosity, is this the stupidest thing you’ve ever done?” “It wouldn’t be fair to rank them.” Caleb gunned the engine.

It would make this a perfectly normal alien invasion.

It takes less time for them to conquer the world than it takes for me to brush my teeth. That's pretty disappointing." Jesse from ALIEN INVASION & OTHER INCONVENIENCES.

Deep down in his heart the genuine Englishman has a rugged distaste for seeing his country invaded by a foreign army. People were asking themselves by what right these aliens had overrun British soil. An ever-growing feeling of annoyance had begun to lay hold of the nation.

The inner power of life within you is the divine and the divine has all power.

There was some kind of X-men emergency, so all the teachers were gone. This happens every now and then. It's one of the perks of having super heroes for your teachers - when the world is about to end (which is like at least twice a month), school gets canceled. Heck, three weeks ago there was a big chemistry final for the upperclassmen. Beast was the teacher - he's this big, burly guy who can do acrobatic stuff like a monkey, but he also happens to be a super-genius. He's, like, legendary for his tough finals, so there were kids walking through the halls, going, "Oh, God, please let Galactus try to eat the earth. Please please please let there be an alien invasion by the Skrulls!

The maxim 'Know thyself,' can be a sharp and painful sword, but it must be endured in order to be a True Human Being.

This is Gnosis: the casting off of all that is inauthentic and entering in all your nakedness into the waters of the Real Authenticity.

It doesn't sound very safe." - Colt "We're breaking into a company owned by aliens who want to wipe humans off the map. It's not supposed to be safe." - Oz "I guess you have a point." - Colt

God is Infinite, and as a person partakes in this Infinite Reality, he or she is also partaking in the infinite variation of this Reality. There's no solid reality as people commonly think of it.

The fatal error of much science fiction has been to subscribe to an optimism based on the idea that revolution, or a new gimmick, or a bunch of strong men, or an invasion of aliens, or the conquest of other planets, or the annihilation of half the world--in short, pretty nearly anything but the facing up to the integral and irredeemable nature of mankind--can bring about utopian situations. It is the old error of the externalization of evil.

Captain Smek himself appeared on television for an official speech to humankind. [...] 'Noble Savages of Earth,' he said. 'Long time we have tried to live together in peace.' (It had been five months.) 'Long time have the Boov suffered under the hostileness and intolerableness of you people. With sad hearts I now concede that Boov and humans will never to exist as one.' I remember being really excited at this point. Could I possibly be hearing right? Were the Boov about to leave? I was so stupid. 'And so now I generously grant you Human Preserves - gifts of land that will be for humans forever, never to be taken away again, now.' [...] So that's when we Americans were given Florida. One state for three hundred million people. There were going to be some serious lines for the bathrooms.

Tom, does this activity that we are undertaking qualify for the moniker cloak-and-dagger?” GERI asked. “I think it does, but I don’t share your enthusiasm for it. I’m the agent on the ground and potentially the one in the line-of-fire.” “Do not worry, Tom. I have got your six,” GERI said, and laughed.

Conservationists who want to cosset nature like a delicate flower, to protect it from the threat of alien species, are the ethnic cleansers of nature, neutralizing the forces that they should be promoting.

I’d like a book for a friend about saving the world from alien invasion. I’d like the main character to be a little like Freddie Mercury and a little like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Does anything spring to mind?

Archons live mainly in Saturn's Rings. Rome was known by the "Romans" as Saturnia, not as Rome and Saturn was one of the Roman gods. However, the Archons do not respect the limits of their living space, nor do they respect the limits of the purposes for which they were created.

When Sophia became one with her Creation, this was more than a simple unification, she became the physical planet along with the very beings who inhabit it.

Planet Earth is a materialization of Sophia's body.

Continue to focus on what is beautiful and good, even while the whole world appears to be falling apart all around you.

In the ancient Sufi oral tradition, Divine Reality says: I was a Hidden Treasure and then I desired to be known, so I created a creation to which I made Myself known; then they knew Me.

Too often, people carry around so much pain in their hearts, that they surround their hearts with an impenetrable wall. In order to make up for the lack of love, people change their focus from their hearts to their brains. The limbic system of the brain likes to collect things and declare its territory. Sadly, because most people lack the courage to open up their hearts again (to possibly being hurt once again), they try to substitute physical assets for the lack of joy that can only be found in the heart. The Demiurge is very happy if you are living in your brain and take your pleasure from acquiring objects, rather than through the many varieties of love. Material possessions bring a kind of fleeting pleasure, but they will never provide a deep joy. Only love brings joy. And to love, one needs to be aware.

What happened to the Divine Feminine? Why has She apparently disappeared from Judaism, Christianity and Islam? In the Gnostic Gospels, we learn that Mary Magdalene was probably the closest disciple of the Christos, the one whom the Master taught the most arcane esoteric wisdom. She was and is the representation of all wisdom. The male apostles of the Christos demonstrated both their jealousy and respect for the wisdom and position of Mary Magdalene.

When the Christos saw the distress of Sophia, He traveled from the Pleroma to help awaken Sophia from her nightmare and to help her in her struggle against the mechanical robotic imitations of humanity.

The word Gnosis was used by the Greeks for 'knowledge' - not everyday common knowledge, but deep knowledge that can only be gained through direct individual revelation. In other words, it is 'Divine Knowledge.

Your mythology can and will change as you grow older and you learn more about life and the spiritual worlds. You are free to abrogate as many verses of your gospel as you wish, and even to be your own heretic.

You do not need to have faith that oxygen is in the air. You simply breathe normally. The oxygen is in you and around you. You cannot see it, but you can breathe it. You know it exists. You do not need faith in oxygen to breathe. In this exact way, you have a direct connection to Ultimate Reality.

She pointed to the wreckage of one of the frigates in the distance. Half the ship had landed atop one of the towers on the edge of the city, the other half on the flatland beyond. “You didn’t…do that, did you?” He shrugged with proper dramatic flair. “I did say I came to rescue you. They were in my way.

It is important to note that the imitation of Yaldabaoth’s Earth is a thought in his mind. Yaldabaoth’s Earth is not real. The point for the reader to remember is that when a person feels an thinks that the world, in which he or she is living, is a horrible and loveless place, he or she has entered Yaldabaoth’s mind.

He made sure his tone remained casual. He was trying to keep his son unaware of the encroaching alien invasion for as long as he could, be it another day or another hour. Once innocence was lost it was never regained. So he took his son fishing and strolled along the river and pretended as though the galaxy wasn’t on fire.

While the Archons cannot physically touchdown on Planet Earth, they can project their thoughts telepathically and their images holographically. They are experts in creating simulations of all kinds, inverting and distorting your perception and in this way, they create an Archontic Inversion. Archons are deceivers par excellence. They live in hive-like structures. They are more like robots than living beings, as they lack intentionality and imagination. In other words, they follow orders like an army of automatons.

However, to the Gnostics, the Christos is an Aeon, dwelling in the Pleroma. The Christos is the syzygy (male Aeonic consort) of Sophia.

Do steers make treaties with meat packers?

You are your own prophet.

God is PURE, ORIGINAL MIND.

I know I am an android, but I feel so ... happy.

There's nothing like a trip to the Yeerk pool to make you appreciate life and freedom.

The wisdom of the Gnostics is called Gnosis. Gnosis cannot be understood through doctrine or dogma. The Gnostics believe that you can have a direct experience with the Infinite Spirit.

This demotion of the exalted role of the Divine Feminine and the role of women in spirituality is nothing less than a horrible nightmare that Western Society has been experiencing for a very long time. It is the wound that will not heal, as spoken of in the Arthurian Romances.

Marcion, in his two brilliant books, explained how the God of the Jews was not the God of whom Jesus spoke. He provided many examples that show that the Jewish god is only a jealous tribal deity. The Old Testament contains some genuine wisdom. However, it is very clear that the Hebrew prophets and rabbis gradually destroyed all trace of the Divine Feminine and worshiped the Demiurge. The same applies to the other main patriarchal religions: Islam and Christianity.

The English language has such terms as: dawn, dusk, first light, daybreak, twilight, crepuscule and evenfall. Yet, not one of these terms outlines an absolute demarcation point between dark and light.

Control thought of the theories as “slow death by,” given the context: Slow death by aliens. Slow death by parallel universe. Slow death by malign unknown time-traveling force. Slow death by invasion from an alternate earth. Slow death by wildly divergent technology or the shadow biosphere or symbiosis or iconography or etymology. Death by this and by that. Death by indifference and inference. His favorite: “Surface-dwelling terrestrial organism, previously unknown.” Hiding where all of these years? In a lake?

today’s forecast is rain of course but you won’t open the curtains to check there are six mugs half drunk by your bed and a broken vein from your heart to your hip. ‘you are a part of the universe’ your mother says with another cup in her hands- ‘isn’t that worth getting out of bed for?’ the rain begins then and hell the forecast could be an alien invasion and you still wouldn’t peel the blinds back to see.

Leading scientists and philosophers such as Nick Bostrom, contend that if an advanced civilization created us, most probably this 'advanced civilization' is also a creation of an even more advance civilization.

As the sky began to darken she sank down in the chair. She had just watched over a thousand Alliance soldiers die in the space of less than a minute. Yet the encounter would be considered a victory, for the enemy was vanquished. But at such a cost. She considered what Alex had asked of her…and began to understand.

The creation of artificial realities is not much different from how people enjoy today's movies depicting life in Ancient Egypt, life during the Middle Ages, depiction of various wars, or life during the Renaissance.

The Supreme Reality, also known as the Uncreated of the First Being, manifested its own fullness. For reasons which will become increasingly clear, Gnostics have always been reserved when it comes to naming this Absolute Reality. Another way of looking at the Supreme Reality is that there is a Reality behind everyday reality.

Alien Parasites. These beings literally feed off your negative energy: anger guilt, jealousy, depression, frustration, sadness and fear; for these intense and often harmful emotions are a gourmet dinner for these evil beings.

I’ll do whatever I can to help guarantee this plan succeeds, and I’ll try to make sure I’m in the right place at the right time.” “The right place and time for what?” “If I knew that, ma’am, I probably wouldn’t need to be there.

A psychic attack of any kind, always begins with the evil being or person looking for your Achilles' heel. This phrase refers to a weakness in spite of overall strength, which can lead to a downfall. Almost everyone, no matter how accomplished in life, has their Achilles' heel, some weakness, some fault, that can be exploited by a black magician.

Alone for a few precious seconds, he drew in a deep breath. He stood on a ruined street in a ruined city. Destruction stretched for kilometers in every direction, all caused by a single man for whom vengeance had devolved into madness.

In the evening [the Iraqi interim governor of Maysan province] asked me for fifty dollars to repair his windows, which had been destroyed in a recent demonstration. Although he was the governor, his salary was only four hundred and fifty dollars a month, and Baghdad had still not agreed to give the governors an independent budget.... For the sake of a tiny sum of money - a couple thousand dollars a month from the hundred billion we had spent on the invasion - we were alienating our key partner and successor. p. 264

Between a monkey and a snake, the one that resists change the most is the snake. You can hardly domesticate a snake and make it your trustworthy friend. And so, taking into consideration that most people refuse to change their attitude, and instead decide to discriminate others and act as enemies to the human race as a whole, in their selfishness, competitiveness and egotistical stubbornness, without empathy or compassion for others, they are acting like reptiles, not mammals. We have too much of reptile-thinking inside the human race; and the distance between our reality and a fiction movie about an alien invasion, in which reptiles walk among us disguised as humans isn't that much. We have been corrupted already. Humanity is nearly extinct due to a massive invasion of a reptilian belief-system.

Where duality divides things into black or white, polarity includes the full spectrum, it is all-inclusive. Duality takes the spectrum and draws a line somewhere cutting it in half. Duality really only exists in the mind; it does not directly relate to the physical realm.

The fully actualized human being is a person who maximizes his or her potential. This activation process attempts to move consciousness from one reality to another, including the incorporation of being aware of multiple realities existing simultaneously. The objective of the actualized integral human being is to unite with the One, the Source, to achieve unity (from the Greek henosis) and to perfect oneself.

The Demiurge has his henchmen: called Archons, who insert strange thoughts into people’s minds. The Demiurge wants total control of the Earth’s planetary destiny and is the greatest threat to humanity. ‘All secrets are in Saturn,’ declared Pythagoras, possibly implying that the Demiurge had made his hoe one the Planet Saturn. Origen of Alexandria (188 CE – 254 CE), also known as Origen Adamantius (‘man of steel’), was one of the earliest and most important Christian scholars. He stated plainly that Yaldabaoth (one of the names of the Demiurge) was the Planet Saturn.

Laches faded away, leaving Miriam standing facing Hyperion, the Metigen who had orchestrated the slaughter of over fifty million people a short year ago. There were limits to even deals with the devil, lines which should never be crossed…but she was beginning to wonder when she might find one.

Alien Parasites are what the Gnostics call 'Archons.' They cause delusions in people's thinking because they convince their victims to believe things that are not true. A delusional person has false or unrealistic beliefs or opinions. A delusional person is someone who has a belief that is held with an extremely strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary. Now, this trait may be a brave attributes, but the delusional person refuses to listen and consider the opposite opinion. The mature and wise individual always is willing to listen to an opposing opinion, and actually is eager to hear the opposing point of view, in order to make sure his or her theories and beliefs can withstand all opposing ideas and to revise his or her ideas if necessary.

Above the curving arc of the planet, a mammoth explosion plumed crimson and charcoal then erupted in a starburst of crystaline white which for a microsecond shone brighter than a sun. For the briefest moment he allowed himself to entertain the notion that they might win this battle. Then the real battle began.

Because we were the good guys. We were in the right. The universe looks out for people who act with honor in furtherance of an honorable cause. It must, or we never would have gotten this far as a species.” “We won—this little conflict and a thousand like it—because we were destined to win. The universe will allow no other outcome.

Wilhelm Reich coined the term Orgone to describe the essential energy of life everywhere throughout nature. Orgone is the universal Life force, the basic building block of all organic and inorganic matter on the material planet. Orgone is also known as prana, life force, the fifth element, ki, chi, élan vital, mana and universal energy.

Gnosticism means "Direct Spiritual Knowing", being in direct experience with the Creative Source. Gnosticism has been called "forbidden self-discovery" by the Church, for it is a form of illumination. In other words, Gnosticism does not need the structure of a church to function. It is therefore, a threat to the existence of many churches.

For those who don't know, Bunnypocalypse is not about an alien rabbit invasion. It's about zombies. And a stripper. No, seriously.

Human civilization was annihilated in three hours, before even one alien bothered to set foot on the ground.

No, we absolutely should do it. If we can capture such a motherlode, it could make a pivotal difference in the coming war. We need it. AEGIS needs it, my mother needs it. This is why we’re here. “I’m merely pausing at the precipice of the cliff, peeking down into the chasm and asking, ‘Are we sure?’ So…” Alex eyed him wearing an uneasy grimace “…are we sure?

Her weight settled on her back foot as she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, now legitimately baffled. “How delusional are you, aliens in your head notwithstanding?

Do not cling to the shore, but set sail for exotic lands and places no longer found on maps. Walk on hallowed grounds. Blaze new trails. The term synchronicity was coined in the 1950s by the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, to describe uncanny coincidences that seem to be meaningful. The Greek roots are syn-, "together," and khronos, "time." Synchronicity is the effector of Gnosis. Explore the Bogomils and the Cathars not just through books but, if at all possible, by visiting their lands, cemeteries and descendants. Finally, explore the most contemporary manifestations of Gnosticism: the writings of C.G. Jung, Jorge Luis Borges, Aleister Crowley, René Guénon, Hermann Hesse, Philip K. Dick, and Albert Camus. Gradually, you will begin to understand the various thought currents and systems existing in Gnosticism, and you will have begun to understand what does and does not appeal to you in Gnostic thought.

Each time a new flower blooms, you are that flower. You are living in an infinite quantum field, so it does not matter in which direction you can choose to view reality - as a hierarchical chain from lowest to highest or a hierarchy from highest to lowest - it does not matter. Because there is an endless blossoming of this flower in all directions. You cannot simply say that you are 'ascending upwards' for example, because there is no up or down, right, or left, or diagonal, in the infinite quantum field. Just as you cannot order soup in a restaurant and ask the waiter to please serve each ingredient separately, so too, humanity also lives in a quantum vibratory soup. That is why there is no dogma in Gnosticism. You just need to intensify your consciousness.

Thirty, forty miles?”  “Well,” said Lila, verbally pouting. “I guess we’d better settle in for a long trip.”  She pushed her body even harder against Raj, then glared at the side of her father’s head. Lila and Trevor got along with Meyer, but they were still teenagers. Piper, recently a teen herself, tried to understand, but often there was no use. Somewhere around your twenty-second birthday, teenagers started sounding like melodramatic idiots no matter what you did.  “That’s another reason to get a hotel room,” Piper said. “They might let planes fly again. We can take the Gulfstream.

At first, you must be willing to enter a state of liminality. In other words, you must be willing to enter a state in which you stand on the threshold and are no longer grasping the worldviews and sense of yourself that you held in the past, nor yet completely ready to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. You stand on the threshold, the doorsill, neither in one world nor another. This can be a frightening place to be.

Archons are basically cosmic bureaucrats. They are demons. They seek to play God. In short, they are Alien Parasites. The Archons are in people’s minds and brains. They love to help people make mistakes, to the point that people are completely lost in confusion. Archons love to lead people into labyrinths of confusion and excessive complexity. Archons make people think that they are more powerful than humanity. Have hope! Do not give up. The Archons, in fact, are much less powerful than the Aeons who live in the Pleroma. If you strengthen your connection with Sophia, the Christos and the Aeons, you have nothing to fear.

He did not have time to wallow, to give a moment’s thought to what may have happened to her or whether she was alive. Turn into the punch, grab hold of the gun, leap into the arena. Attack. He had to move. Now.

Solum invoked a sensation akin to lingering déjà vu in the wake of a dream. It was not Earth. Its city-planet architectural stylings hid the outline of continents that might have otherwise been recognizable and altered the vibrant blue-and-green color palette enough to erase any familiarity in its silhouette. Yet if you tilted your head just so and let your gaze unfocus a little, you could almost see Earth. Its echo, its memory.

What he was referring to is the fact that there are two worlds: the true glory of Sophia and the false world of the Demiurge. The false world of the Demiurge seems the same as the world of Sophia, except that it is, to use a metaphor, colorless. The world of the Demiurge is the world as it seems to people obsessed with material possessions, attracted by the desire to control the realm of the Goddess Sophia, people who prefer the artificial to the authentic, people in the clutches of delusional poisonous drugs, people with addictions to other people and alcohol, as well as food, spending, pornography, gambling, angry people who are fixated with politics and financial issues; people who are full of illusory worries about possible future events rather than living in the authentic present now, people who see the world through the eyes of the media and people who are completely isolated from themselves emotionally. These people never 'see' and never 'hear' the real world around and within them. They live in the false duplicate reality of the Earth manufactured by Yaldabaoth. This facsimile is an illusory world.

I hate computers. My hatred is entrenched, and I nourish it daily. I’m comfortable with it, and no community outreach program will change my mind. I hate computers for getting their own section in the New York Times and for lengthening commercials with the mention of a Web site address. Who really wants to find out more about Procter & Gamble? Just buy the toothpaste or laundry detergent, and get on with it. I hate them for creating the word org and I hate them for e-mail, which isn’t real mail but a variation of the pointless notes people used to pass in class. I hate computers for replacing the card catalog in the New York Public Library and I hate the way they’ve invaded the movies. I’m not talking about their contribution to the world of special effects. I have nothing against a well-defined mutant or full-scale alien invasion — that’s good technology. I’m talking about their actual presence in any given movie. They’ve become like horses in a western — they may not be the main focus, but everybody seems to have one.

For Persians, Shahnameh is like their identity papers, their conclusive evidence that they have lived. Against the brutality of time and politics, against the threat of constant invasions and destructions imposed on them by enemies alien and domestic, against a reality they had little or no control over, they created magnificent monuments in words, they reasserted both their own worth and the best achievements of mankind through a work like Shahnameh, the golden thread that links one Persian to the other, connecting the past to the present.” - Foreword by Azar Nafisi

What do you want me to do? Arrest them all?” “When you can, absolutely.” “And when I can’t?” “Do whatever is necessary to remove their ability to act against us—against humanity.” “You mean kill them.” Her expression darkened in what he sensed was sorrow, but her shoulders rose. “If that’s what it takes.

Imagine if you will, creatures as unlike us as it is possible to be; creatures whose technology dwarfed ours as we dwarf the ants. Creatures whose sole purpose was to wipe out all existing life on Earth and replace it with their own. Beings who did not know the meaning of mercy, who were uninterested in dialogue, with whom one could not even plead. That is what we were up against, Henry.

The Gnostics believed that we can experience resurrection before death. In other words, Gnostics are granted such special knowledge that they can regenerate their bodies and resurrect themselves before dying. Moreover, they have special abilities to control their DNA. The Sufi Dervishes know and teach these practices. Additionally, in Dzogchen (a teaching from the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism) they speak of the "Rainbow Body". The exceptional practitioners of Dzogchen, when they are about to die, concentrate on their Body of Pure Light. His physical body releases itself into a body of non-material light (a Sambhogakaya) with the capacity to exist and to remain where and when indicated by one's compassion. In Gnosticism, this is called the radiant body, resurrection body, or immortal body (the soma athanaton). This body has also been called 'The Philosopher's Stone.

All those years of lurid magazine covers showing extremely nubile females being menaced in three distinct colors by assorted monstrosities; those horror movies, those invasion-from-outer-space novels, those Sunday supplement fright splashes—all those sturdy psychological ruts I had to re-track. Not to mention the shudders elicited by mention of 'worms,' the regulation distrust of even human "furriners,” the superstitious dread of creatures who had no visible place to park a soul. ("Betelgeuse Bridge)

I built, of blocks, a town three hundred thousand strong, whose avenues were paved with a wine-colored rug and decorated by large leaves outlined inappropriately in orange, and on this leafage I'd often park my Tootsie Toy trucks, as if on pads of camouflage, waiting their deployment against catastrophes which included alien invasions, internal treachery, and world war. It was always my intention, and my conceit, to use up, in the town's construction, every toy I possessed: my electronic train, of course, the Lincoln Logs, old kindergarten blocks—their deeply incised letters always a problem—the Erector set, every lead soldier that would stand (broken ones were sent to the hospital), my impressive array of cars, motorcycles, tanks, and trucks—some with trailers, some transporting gas, some tows, some dumps—and my squadrons of planes, my fleet of ships, my big and little guns, an undersized group of parachute people (looking as if one should always imagine them high in the sky, hanging from threads), my silversided submarines, along with assorted RR signs, poles bearing flags, prefab houses with faces pasted in their windows, small boxes of a dozen variously useful kinds, strips of blue cloth for streams and rivers, and glass jars for town water towers, or, in a pinch, jails. In time, the armies, the citizens, even the streets would divide: loyalties, friendships, certainties, would be undermined, the city would be shaken by strife; and marbles would rain down from formerly friendly planes, steeples would topple onto cars, and shellfire would soon throw aggie holes through homes, soldiers would die accompanied by my groans, and ragged bands of refugees would flee toward mountain caves and other chairs and tables.