As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.

Despair leads to boredom, electronic games, computer hacking, poetry and other bad habits.

A world without open country would be universal jail.

James Joyce buried himself in his great work. _Finnegan's Wake_ is his monument and his tombstone. A dead end.

Critics are like ticks on a dog or tits on a motor: ornamental but dysfunctional.

Jack Kerouac, like a sick refrigerator, worked too hard at keeping cool and died on his mama's lap from alcohol and infantilism.

Among politicians and businessmen, *Pragmatism* is the current term for 'To hell with our children.'