Your authority and my degeneracy are one in the same. - Saul Bellow

In politics continental Europe was infantile — horrifying. What America lacked, for all its political stability, was the capacity to enjoy intellectual pleasures as though they were sensual pleasures. This is what Europe offered, or was said to offer.

Going up, Herzong found a bouquet of violets, dropped from the hand of a woman. Perhaps a bride. Little perfume remained in them, but they made him remember... These violets smelled to him like female tears. He gave them a burial in the trash ca, hoping they had not dropped from a disappointed hand.

For the first time in history, the human species as a whole has gone into politics. Everyone is in the act, and there is no telling what may come of it.