He was doing missionary work. But from the outset he had little success in convincing his charges of their responsibility for a sin committed at the beginning of creation, one which, as they understood it, they were ready and capable (indeed, they carried charms to assure it) of duplicating themselves. He did no better convincing them that a man had died on a tree to save them all: an act which one old Indian, if Gwyon had translated correctly, regarded as "rank presumption".

What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work?

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.

We're comic. We're all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.

...mementos of this world, in which the things worth being were so easily exchanged for the things worth having.

That's what I can't stand. I know I'll bounce back, and that's what I can't stand.

There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.