“Whether we like it or not, our eyes gobble squares, circles, and all manner of fabricated forms, wires on poles, triangles on poles, circles on levers, cylinders, balls, domes, tubes, more or less distinct or in elaborate relationships. The eye consumes these things and conveys them to some stomach that is tough or delicate. People who eat anything and everything do seem to have the advantage of their magnificent stomachs.”

(Paul Klee, from The Thinking Eye, quoted in Lyn Hejinian’s “The Rejection of Closure” (1984).)

“In Thomas More’s Utopia separation was the founding gesture: Utopus Rex commanded a trench be dug to cut Utopia off from the mainland. A friend of Erasmus, reviewing Moore’s Utopia, described this in a dedicatory poem:

Me, once a peninsula,
Utopus Rex made an island.
Alone among all nations,
without complex abstraction
I set the philosophical city
before the human reader.

I give freely;
and if you have better ideas

I’m all ears.

Erasmus and friends were perpetuating a hoax – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say they were suggesting one – refusing to dispel the thought formed by some naifs that Utopia was a real place.”

(Bob Perelman, pp. 117–118 in The Grand Piano, part 4.)

“There are times when every act, no matter how private or unconscious, becomes political. Whom you live with, how you wear your hair, whether you marry, whether you insist that your child take piano lessons, what are the brand names on your shelf; all these become political decisions. At other times, no act – no campaign or tract, statement or rampage – has any political charge at all. People with the least sense of which times are, and which are not, political are usually most avid about politics. At six one morning Will went out in jeans and frayed sweater to buy a quart of milk. A tourist bus went by. The megaphone was directed at him. ‘There’s one,’ it said. That was in the 1960’s. Ever since, he’s wondered. There’s one what?”

(Renata Adler, Speedboat, pp. 36–37.)

“It is our need that is crying out, that and our immense wealth, the product of fear,—a torment to the spirit; we sell—but carefully—to see blessings abroad. And this wealth, all that is not pure accident—is the growth of fear.

It is this which makes us the flaming terror of the world, a Titan, stupid (as were all the giants), great, to be tricked or tripped (from terror of us) with hatred barking at us by every sea—and by those most to whom we give the most. In the midst of wealth, riches, we have the inevitable Coolidge platform: “poorstateish”—meek. THIS is his cure before the world: our goodness and industry. THIS will convince the world that we are RIGHT. It will not. Make a small mouth. It is the acme of shrewdness, of policy. It will work. We shall have more to give. Logical reasoning it is: generous to save and give. It is bred of fear. It is as impossible for a rich nation to convince any one of its generosity as for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Puritanical; pioneer; ‘out of the small white farm-house’—the product of delay. The characteristic of American life is that it holds off from embraces, from impacts, gaining by fear, safety and time in which to fortify its prolific carcass—while the spirit, with tongue hanging out, bites at its bars—its object just out of reach. Wilson grazed heaven by his lewdness; the door stood open till it was slammed close. I relish the back door gossip that made him impossible.”

(William Carlos Williams, “Jacataqua”, pp. 174–175 in In the American Grain.)

“Being desirous to furnish himself with a Dog he applied himself to buy one of this Martin, who had a Bitch with Whelps in her House. But she was not letting him have his choice, he said, he would supply himself then at one Blezdels. Having mark’d a Puppy, which he lik’d at Blezdel’s, he met George Martin, the Husband of the Prisoner, going by, who asked him, Whether he would not have one of his Wife’s Puppies? and he answered, No. The same Day, one Edmond Eliot, being at Martin’s House, heard George Martin relate, where this Kembal had been, and what he had said, whereupon Susanna Martin replied, If I live, I’ll give him Puppies enough! Within a few days after, this Kembal, coming out of the Woods, there arose a little Black Cloud in the North West and Kembal immediately felt a force upon him, which made him not able to avoid running upon the stumps of Trees, that were before him, albeit he had a broad, plain Cart-way, before him; but tho’ he had his Ax also on his Shoulder, to endanger him in his Falls, he could not forbear going out of his way to stumble over them. When he came below the Meeting House, there appeared unto him, a little thing like a Puppy, of a Darkish Colour; and it shot backwards and forwards between his Legs. He had the Courage to use all possible Endeavours of Cutting it with his Ax; but he could not Hit it; the Puppy gave a jump from him, and went, as to him it seem’d into the Ground. Going a little further, there appeared unto him a Black Puppy, somewhat bigger than the first, but as Black as a Cole. Its Motions were quicker than those of his Ax; it flew at his Belly, and away; then at his Throat; so, over his Shoulder one way, and then over his Shoulder another way. His Heart now began to fail him, and he thought the Dog would have tore his Throat out. But he recovered himself, and called upon God in his Distress; and naming the Name of JESUS CHRIST, it vanished away at once. The Depondent spoke not one Word of these Accidents, for fear of affrighting his Wife. But the next Morning, Edmond Eliot, going into Martin’s House, this Woman asked him where Kembal was? He replied, At home a Bed for ought he knew. She returned, They say, he was frighted last Night. Eliot asked, With what? She answered, With Puppies. Eliot asked, Where she had heard of it, for he had heard nothing of it? She rejoined, About the Town. Altho’ Kembal had mentioned the Matter to no Creature living.”

(from “Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World,” pp. 96–98 in William Carlos Williams’s In the American Grain.)

“And in the midst of all this, I noticed her hands becoming strangers to each other, bumping like two blind puppies.”

(Brian O’Doherty, The Strange Case of Mademoiselle P., p. 100)