Maybe the unconscious is overrated... What if your unconscious is full of false consciousness or bad faith? What if it's more like a trash compactor … - John Leonard

Run from the Furies, and they find you, as if fear were a homing device, as if literature itself, on contemplating the abyss, were an invitation to jump into it, while Wagner whistles.

Somewhere in the Bill of Rights is a Pig Amendment; our freedom to stuff ourselves cannot be abridged. Having so stuffed, we demand a technological solution to the fat problem. Give me cyclamates, or give me death! This is not only immoral; it is also boring.

The magaicians of the 19th century, enthralled by the science of optics, photography and electricity, opened the door to motion pictures and thereby rendered themselves obsolete. Any amateur with a pair of scissors can cut and edit a strip of film in order to make a woman vanish, sever a head, burn a body down to the skeleton and reverse time. Talent went out of style.… People either didn't believe Houdini when he said that his tricks on film were real, or they didn't care. Illusion became big bigness, and the magicians were out of work.