Madness has its own dynamism. It just goes on.

When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things. ... I must be scientific.

Maybe I'll go where I can see stars, he said to himself as the car gained velocity and altitude; it headed away from San Francisco, toward the uninhabited desolation to the north. To the place where no living thing would go. Not unless it felt that the end had come.

The will to believe chases out the rational mind, whenever and wherever the two come into conflict.

Life in Anaheim, California, was a commercial for itself, endlessly replayed. Nothing changed; it just spread out farther and farther in the form of neon ooze. What there was always more of had been congealed into permanence long ago, as if the automatic factory that cranked out these objects had jammed in the on position.

Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because,ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated.

It really seems to me that in the midst of great tragedy, there is always the horrible possibility that something terribly funny will happen.