Tis e'er the lot of the innocent in the world, to fly to the wolf for succor from the lion.

Printed prose is historically a most peculiar, almost an aberrant way of telling stories, and by far the most inherently anesthetic: It is the only medium of art I can think of which appeals directly to none of our five senses. The oral and folk tradition in narrative made use of verse or live-voice dynamics, embellished by gesture and expression--a kind of rudimentary theater--as do the best raconteurs of all times. Commonly there was musical accompaniment as well: a kind of one-man theater-of-mixed-means.

You don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings... serendipitously.

All men are loyal, but their objects of allegiance are at best approximate.

He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator -- though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed.

History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant

Those rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state.