“In a nation whose great informing myth is that it has no great informing myth, familiarity equaled timelessness”

“Atwater knew — as did everyone at Style, though by some strange unspoken consensus it was never said aloud — that this was the single great informing conflict of the American psyche. The management of insignificance. It was the great syncretic bond of US monoculture.”

“Great short stories and great jokes have a lot in common. Both depend on what communication-theorists sometimes call “exformation,” which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections within the recipient. This is probably why the effect of both short stories and jokes often feels sudden and percussive, like the venting of a long-stuck valve.”

“Dostoevski informs everybody; or he ought to.”

“This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can’t think anyone really believes that today’s so-called ‘information society’ is just about information. Everyone knows it’s about something else, way down.”

“[T]o really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.”

“Can you "choose" something when you are forcefully and enthusiastically immersed in it at an age when the resources and information necessary for choosing are not yet yours?”