"Why have you taken to that dreadful stodge?"
"I'm driven to it. It's like drink; once you begin you've got to go on."
"What on earth made you begin?"
"I wanted to know things—to know what's real and what isn't, and what's at the back of everything, and whether there is anything there or not. And whether you can know it or not. And how you can know anything at all, anyhow. I'd give anything … Are you listening?"
"Yes, Minky, you'd give anything—"
"I'd give everything—everything I possess—to know what the
Thing-in-itself is."
"I'd rather know Arabic. Or how to make a gun that would find its own range and feed itself with bullets sixty to the minute."
"That would be only knowing a few; more things. I want the thing. Reality, Substance, the Thing-in-itself. Spinoza calls it God. Kant doesn't; but he seems to think it's all the God you'll ever get, and that, even then, you can't know it. Transcendental Idealism is just another sell."
"Supposing," Mark said, "there isn't any God at all."
"Then I'd rather know that than go on thinking there was one when there wasn't."