We have named all the stars and all the planets, even though they might already have had names of their own. What a nerve! - Stanisław Lem

Yes, it’s comforting to know, when you think about it, that only man can be a bastard.

How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one another?

As more and more norms disappear from social praxis, literature faces ever-growing difficulties. Its predicament is beginning to resemble that of a child who has discovered that his incredibly understanding parents will let him break with impunity all his toys, indeed everything in the house. The artist cannot create specific prohibitions for himself in order to attack them later in his work; the prohibitions must be real, and hence independent of the writer's choices. And since the relativization of cultural norms has not so far been able to disturb the given characteristics of human biology, that is where writers today seek the still perceptible points of resistance — which is why literature is preoccupied with the theme of sex.