In the modern technoindustrial culture, it is possible to proceed from infancy into senility without ever knowing manhood.

Jane Austen: Getting into her books is like getting in bed with a cadaver. Something vital is lacking; namely, life.

I hate intellectual discussion. When I hear the words 'phenomenology' or 'structuralism', I reach for my buck knife.

A crowded society is a restrictive society; an overcrowded society becomes an authoritarian, repressive and murderous society.

John Updike: our greatest suburban chic-boutique man of letters. A smug and fatal complacency has stunted his growth beyond hope of surgical repair. Not enough passion in his collected works to generate steam in a beer can. Nevertheless, he is considered by some critics to be America's finest *living* author: Hold a chilled mirror to his lips and you will see, presently, a fine and dewy moisture condensing -- like a faery breath! -- upon the glass.

Recorded history is largely an account of the crimes and disasters committed by banal little men at the levers of imperial machines.

Art, science, philosophy, religion -- each offers at best only a crude simplification of actual living experience.