All dramatic realism is somewhat sadistic; an audience is persuaded to watch something that makes it uncomfortable and from which no relief is offered - no laughter, no tears, no purgation.

... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.

Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished, or if it does, as in the case of the tilled field, this product of human activity requires still more labor, incessant, tireless labor, to maintain its identity as a 'work' of man.

What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were?

For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.

Whenever in history, equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.

On the wall of our life together hung a gun waiting to be fired in the final act.