There is no literature and art without paranoia. Probably there would be even civilization. Paranoia is the world. It is the attempt to make sense of… - Thomas Pynchon

We simply grow up. In Florence, at age fifty-four, I was a brash youth. Had I known the Duse was there her poet chap might have found dangerous competition, ha-ha. The only trouble is that now, nearing eighty, I keep discovering that damned war has made the world older than I. The world frowns now on youth in a vacuum, it insists youth be turned-to, utilized, exploited. No time for pranks. No more Vheissus.

Acts have consequences, Dixon, they must. These Louts believe all's right now, — that they are free to get on with Lives that to them are no doubt important, — with no Glimmer at all of the Debt they have taken on. That is what I smell'd, — Lethe-Water. One of the things the newly-born forget, is how terrible its Taste, and Smell. In Time, these People are able to forget ev'rything. Be willing but to wait a little, and ye may gull them again and again, however ye wish, — even unto their own Dissolution. In America, as I apprehend, Time is the true River that runs 'round Hell.

A screaming comes across the sky.