That's the world out there, little green apples and infectious disease.

California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.

We seem to believe it is possible to ward off death by following rules of good grooming.

Everything's a scandal. Dying's a scandal. But we all do it.

It's true that some of us become better writers by living long enough. But this is also how we become worse writers. The trick is to die in between.

Somehow pictures always lead to people as masses. Books belong to individuals.

To plot is to live. […] We start out lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that's not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual. Picture a state funeral, Jack. It is all precision, detail, order, design. The nation holds its breath. - (WN 292)