A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.

Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise.

Losing hope is not so bad. There's something worse: losing hope and hiding it from yourself.

They all think any minute I'm going to commit suicide. What a joke. The truth of course is the exact opposite: suicide is the only thing that keeps me alive. Whenever everything else fails, all I have to do is consider suicide and in two seconds I'm as cheerful as a nitwit. But if I could not kill myself -- ah then, I would. I can do without nembutal or murder mysteries but not without suicide.

I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?

This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground.

In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished.