God was a clever idea … The human race came up with a winner there. - J. G. Ballard

Already it was clear that the lower floors were doomed. Even their insistence on educating their children, the last reflex of any exploited group before it sank into submission, marked the end of their resistance.

Crime and vandalism are everywhere. You have to rise above these mindless thugs and the oafish world they inhabit. Insecurity forces you to cherish whatever moral strengths you have, just as political prisoners memorize Dostoevsky's House of the Dead, the dying play Bach and rediscover their faith, parents mourning a dead child do voluntary work at a hospice.

Sex is now a conceptual act, it's probably only in terms of the perversions that we can make contact with each other at all.