“Out of curiosity, why would you have tried to destroy the world?” “Ever attempted to hunt down a parking space at Christmas? Buy a shirt in a store the day after Thanksgiving? Those two things alone will make you doubt the humanity of humans, and question if survival of the species is in anyone’s best interest. What are we fighting for, anyway? Better department store sales?”

“A department store two days before Christmas Eve is like a city in a state of siege....”

“It seems to me in retrospect that the department stores and the dime stores did an excellent job of extending the 'sacred space' of Christmas in those days. And I sometimes wonder whether for people of no religion, this might have been the only sacred space they knew. When people rail now against the 'commercial nature of Christmas,' I'm always conflicted an unable to respond. Because I think those who would banish commercialism from the holiday fail to understand how precious and comforting the shop displays and music can be.”

“They buy things in ready-made stores. But since there are no stores where you can buy friends, people no longer have friends.”

“That whole week, we started to divide things into those two categories: anything or something. A piece of jewelry bougth at a department store: anything. A piece of jewelry made by hand: something. A dollar: anything. A sand dollar: something. A gift certificate: anything. An IOU for two hours of starwatching: something. A drunk kiss at a party: anything. A sober kiss alone in a park: something.”

“You see these unsold goods taking up space in busy stores and ask yourself, 'Who would ever buy such a thing? To whose antiquated and misguided sense of taste would such a thing appeal?' To the dead, I answer! The dead are the eternally out of fashion!...These piles of unsold goods are conclusive proof of the existence of an eternal and insatiable appetite.”