“Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.”

“Full stories are as rare as honesty.”

“That kind of inability to improve is really very rare. That kind of consistency is miraculous, in a way.”

“But didn't everyone get everything? Hadn't they had enough yet? Everything on earth is tailored for this everyone. Everyone gets all the TV programs, damn near all the cinema, and about eighty percent of all music. After that come the secondary medium of painting and those other visual arts that do not move. Those are generally just for someone and although you always hear people moaning that there isn't enough of them, in truth someone does all right. Galleries, museums, basements in Berlin, studio flats, journals, bare walls in urban centers—someone gets what they want and deserve, most of the time. But where are the things that no one wants? Every now and then Alex would see or hear something that appeared to be for no one but soon enough it turned out to be for someone and, after a certain amount of advertising revenue had been spent, would explode into the world for everyone. Who was left to make stuff for no one?”

“If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein, and a needle, tradition is a far homelier concoction: poppy seeds ground into tea; a sweet cocoa drink laced with cocaine; the kind of thing your grandmother might have made.”

“This, after all, was the month in which families began tightening and closing and sealing; from Thanksgiving to the New Year, everybody's world contracted, day by day, into the microcosmic single festive household, each with its own rituals and obsessions, rules and dreams. You didn't feel you could call people. They didn't feel they could phone you. How does one cry for help from these seasonal prisons?”

“How much longer on the divan? Why does sex have to mean everything? OK, it can mean something, but why everything? Why do thirty years have to go down the toilet because I wanted to touch somebody else? Am I missing something? Is this what it comes down to? Why does the sex have to mean everything?”