the time for prizes and competitions at art festivals is over. Competition is too closely tied to values that are alien to the arts.

There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.

the time for prizes and competitions at art festivals is over. Competition is too closely tied to values that are alien to the arts.

It is always self-defeating to pretend to the style of a generation younger than your own; it simply erases your own experience in history.

Lyda was an exuberant, even a dramatic gardener.... She was always holding up a lettuce or a bunch of radishes with an air of resolute courage, as though she had shot them herself.

Nothing defines the quality of life in a community more clearly than people who regard themselves, or whom the consensus chooses to regard, as mentally unwell.

Intelligent people, caught at anything, denied it. Faced with evidence of having denied it falsely, people said they had not done it and had not lied about it, and didn't remember it, but if they had done it, or lied about it, they would have done it and misspoken themselves about it in an interest so much higher as to alter the nature of doing and lying altogether.