He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.

It is the anonymous "they," the enigmatic "they" who are in charge. Who is "they"? I don't know. Nobody knows. Not even "they" themselves.

Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.

As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.

So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven?

Let someone else get killed!

The question is: what is a sane man to do in an insane society?