“The baby dove into the room, transforming grotesquely as it landed on the floorin a deft sumersault”

“Man's hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.”

“This is the house where they found Jack dead.This is the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the wall, splattered in red,standing next to the floor,in the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the door leading into the tomb.This is the wall splattered in red,standing next to the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the clock hanging over the door.This is the wall splattered in redstanding next to the floorin the roomin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the bird coming out of the clockhanging over the doorin the wallby the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the song in the heart of the birdcoming out of the clockhanging over the doorin the wallby the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.These are the wordsto the song of the birdcoming out of the clockhanging over the doorin the wallby the floorin the roomof the housewhere they found Jack dead.This is the man who sits in the cell.Eleven years have come and gone.Jack is dead, but he lives on.He waits in silence, but he still can hear.The ancient song echoes in his ears.The sound of time with its tick tick TOCK!The song of the bird coming out of the clock,hanging over a door leading into a tomb,where there stand four walls splattered all in red,and a floor where a good man fell and bled,in the room of the house where they found Jack dead.These are the words of the cuckoo’s song,as he asks us who will right these wrongs.The cuckoo sings and the cuckoo wails,for the dead who cannot tell their tales.Rage all you want, but at close of day,justice is mine, and I will repay.”

“Our fiction is not merely in flight from the physical data of the actual world…it is, bewilderingly and embarrassingly, a gothic fiction, nonrealistic and negative, sadist and melodramatic – a literature of darkness and the grotesque in a land of light and affirmation…our classic [American] literature is a literature of horror for boys”

“You’ll never know that just sitting across a room full of people, I have transformed you into a goddess. A destroyer of despair.”

“The planting of [orchards] represents a reduction of a complex ecology into the monocultural grid of modern agriculture, and the transformation of a complex symbiosis with the land into the simpler piecework or agricultural labour for surplus and export.”