“The last great attempt to free consciousness from the domination of impulses and social controls was psychoanalysis; as Freud pointed out, the two tyrants that fought for control over the mind were the id and the superago, the first a servant of a genes, the second a lackey of society - both representing the "Other".”

“The first rule of style is to have something to say. The second rule of style is to control yourself when, by chance, you have two things to say; say first one, then the other, not both at the same time.”

“I’m merely pointing out that the gene that controls intelligence skipped a generation in the Van Holtz household.”

“... the repression of primitive, violent impulses in favor of civilized behavior was a control mechanism for the more shrewdly aggressive dominators who successfully channeled *their* primitive, violent impulses into a socially acceptable form known as 'ruthlessness,' while monopolizing the right to use outright violence as a last resort for maintaining an otherwise indefensible accumulation of power and wealth.”

“Literature in the written sense represents the triumph of language over writing: the subversion of writing for purposes that have little or nothing to do with social and economic control.”

“Healthy" and "diseased," as Susan Sontag points out...are often subjective judgments that society makes for its own purposes. Women have long been defined as sick as a means of subjecting them to social control.”