For a pure sense of being tumultuously alive, you can't beat the nasty side of existence.

Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?

The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction.

You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn't annihilate human nature.

The book really comes to life in the rewriting.

People were standing up everywhere shouting, "This is me! This is me!" Every time you looked at them they stood up and told you who they were, and the truth of it was that they had no more idea who or what they were than he had. They believed their flashing signs, too. They ought to be standing up and shouting, "This isn't me! This isn't me!" They would if they had any decency. "This isn't me!" Then you might know how to proceed through the flashing bullshit of this world.

American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.