One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual. - Thomas Mann

But what would be our readers’ reaction if we simply refused to get to the bottom of that question?

How strange a vehicle it is, coming down unchanged from times of old romance, and so characteristically black, the way no other thing is black except a coffin — a vehicle evoking lawless adventures in the plashing stillness of night, and still more strongly evoking death itself, the bier, the dark obsequies, the last silent journey!

Why does almost everything seem to me like its own parody? Why must I think that almost all, no, all the methods and conventions of art today are good for parody only?