“Polly had always marveled . . . that her country would name such a processed and unnatural product [American cheese] after itself, yet hungry Rose . . . gleefully ate every individually wrapped, plastic little one of them.”

“I’m single, like a cheese slice individually wrapped in plastic.”

“State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production.”

“It’s amazing that a thin film of plastic wrap is enough to protect food against the aggression of hungry marauders. Or maybe the plastic cover doesn’t act as a shield, but rather the starving mob is staved off by one simple word: Leftovers.”

“New York - that unnatural city where every one is an exile, none more so than the American”

“We are in the process of disabling our most distinctive achievement - our educational system - in the name of making the country more like itself.”