I Believe In No Final Solutions.

So One Must Be Resigned To Being A Clock That Measures The Passage Of Time, Now Out Of Order, Now Repaired, And Whose Mechanism Generates Despair And Love As Soon As Its Maker Sets It Going? Are We To Grow Used To The Idea That Every Man Relives Ancient Torments, Which Are All The More Profound Because They Grow Comic With Repetition? That Human Existence Should Repeat Itself, Well And Good, But That It Should Repeat Itself Like A Hackneyed Tune, Or A Record A Drunkard Keeps Playing As He Feeds Coins Into The Jukebox.

Have It Compose A Poem -- A Poem About A Haircut! But Lofty, Noble, Tragic, Timeless, Full Of Love, Treachery, Retribution, Quiet Heroism In The Face Of Certain Doom! Six Lines, Cleverly Rhymed, And Every Word Beginning With The Letter S!

For Some Time There Was A Widely Held Notion (zealously Fostered By The Daily Press) To The Effect That The 'thinking Ocean' Of Solaris Was A Gigantic Brain, Prodigiously Well-developed And Several Million Years In Advance Of Our Own Civilization, A Sort Of 'cosmic Yogi', A Sage, A Symbol Of Omniscience, Which Had Long Ago Understood The Vanity Of All Action And For This Reason Had Retreated Into An Unbreakable Silence.

Not Only Does God Play Dice With The World He Does Not Let Us See What He Has Rolled.

Giese Was An Unemotional Man, But Then In The Study Of Solaris Emotion Is A Hindrance To The Explorer. Imagination And Premature Theorizing Are Positive Disadvantages In Approaching A Planet Where-as Has Become Clear-anything Is Possible... The Fact Is That In Spite Of His Cautious Nature The Scrupulous Giese More Than Once Jumped To Premature Conclusions. Even When On Their Guard, Human Beings Inevitably Theorize.