For me, boviscopophobia is an even stronger motive than semi-agoraphobia for staying on the ship when we're in port.

Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies, upped the stakes.

Here is how to handle being a feral prodigy.

Hear this or not, as you will. Learn it now, or later -- the world has time. Routine, repetition, tedium, monotony, ephemeracy, inconsequence, abstraction, disorder, boredom, angst, ennui -- these are the true hero's enemies, and make no mistake, they are fearsome indeed. For they are real.

Words and a book and a belief that the world is words.

I felt the sort of soaring, ceilingless tedium that transcends tedium and becomes worry.

It's in the democratic citizen's nature to be like a leaf that doesn't believe in the tree it's part of.