“My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.”

“Yes: if only a hundredth of the efforts spent in curing diseases were spent in curing debauchery, disease would long ago have ceased to exist, whereas now all efforts are employed, not in extirpating debauchery, but in favoring it, by assuring the harmlessness of the consequences.”

“For one quarter, Black Tiger lets me escape from my rotten existence for three glorious hours. Pretty good deal.”

“But to anyone reasonable, my life will seem more or less normal-under-the-microscope, full of contingencies and incongruities none of us escapes and which do little harm in an existence that otherwise goes unnoticed.”

“One doesn’t become a witch to run around being helpful either…. It’s to escape all that – to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread of life a day.”

“I have spent years of my life lovingly absorbed in the thoughts and perceptions of . . . people who do not exist.”