“The American house has been TV-centered for three generations. It is the focus of family life, and the life of the house correspondingly turns inward, away from whatever corresponds beyond its four walls.At the same time, the television if the families chief connection to the world. The physical envelope of the house itself no longer connects their lives to the outside in any active way; rather it seals them from it.The outside world has become an abstraction filtered through television, just as the weather is an abstraction filtered through air conditioning.”

“The car, is the other connection to the outside world, but to be precise it connects the inhabitants to the inside of the car, not to the outside world per se. The outside world is only an element for moving through, as submarines move through water.”

“There was an air of satisfaction to the house at the end of the day. Maybe the day hadn't gone exactly right, but the day had been lived and the house had been there for its family.”

“Why America has never made the connection between tract housing and psychosis is beyond me”

“Like Rosaleen and Arthur's house, this had the feel of generations of people who had lived there before, families that had grown up, run and shouted through the hallways, broken things, grown things, fallen in love. Instead of the occupants owning the house, the house owned a part of each of them.”

“Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you: build, therefore, your own world.”