“But there was an abiding and aboriginal fear too, which had kept him from ever being tempted; where cars had been to Joe Boyd and the boys of the Cumberlands heart-filling personifications (even named, often) of freedom and power and heat, to Pierce they had been like the dogs chained to stakes outside Cumberland cabins, or encountered roaming free in the hollers: big beasts, minding their own business but to be dealt with gingerly or not at all. He still sometimes dreamed of such dogs, but filled with mindless malevolence, their chains giving way like twine; and he had dreams too of finding himself inexplicably at the wheel, under way and the pedals useless, the car speeding willfully toward ruin.”

(John Crowley, Love & Sleep, p. 278.)

“It’s the flow of thought that is so beautiful, yes, the flow, and its murmur that travels beyond the world’s clamor. Let yourself attempt to stop thought, to bring its contents to light, and you’d end up with (how could I say, how could I not say rather) trying to preserve the quavering, ungraspable outlines, you’d end up with nothing, water slipping through your fingers, a few graceless drops drying out in the light. It was night now in my mind, I was alone in the semi-darkness of the booth and I was thinking, protected from outer torments. The most favorable conditions for thinking, the moments when thought can let itself naturally follow its course, are precisely moments when, having temporarily given up fighting a seemingly inexhaustible reality, the tension begins to loosen little by little, all the tension accumulated in protecting yourself against the threat of injury – and I had my share of minor injuries – and that, alone in an enclosed space, alone and following the course of your thoughts in a state of growing relief, you move progressively from the struggle of living to the despair of being.”

(Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Camera, trans. Matthew B. Smith, pp. 82–83.)

“A Lady Reader, having read the novel up to this point, asked, ‘Just where is this story is headed? A proper story needs characters, and character development!’

‘But who will create them? I live in a godless world. I live in a world full of injustice. I don’t know what joy is, I don’t know what sorrow is. I don’t know who I am. Surya used to tell me about how his baby chicks would get carried away by kites. He would protect the eggs for twenty-seven days, help the chicks crack open their shells and come out, keep them warm, teach them to eat grain – all this just for a kite to come swooping down from the sky and carry them off in its talons. Not even nine chicks escaped. Tell me, where is the justice in this world?

‘A tortoise lays ninety eggs. Even before all the eggs can hatch and the baby tortoises can make their way back to the sea, most of them are taken by sea birds Only eighteen of the ninety make it back to the sea safely.

‘When a female cricket makes her chitek chitek noise, the male cricket comes flying in to have sex with her, after which it drops dead.

‘Ponder for a moment on the plight of this male cricket. Does he know that the female is going to call chitek chitek? Once he hears the sound, does he have any choice but to fly to her? It is his nature to answer her call, to have sex with her, and then to die.

‘Where is the justice in this world? Where is the order? How can I create characters under such circumstances? If I can’t even create characters, how can I possibly tell a story?’

‘You can,’ says the Lady Reader.

‘How?’ asked Nano.

‘I won’t tell you. Find out for yourself,’ said the Lady Reader, and left.”

(Charu Nivedita, Zero Degree, trans. Pritham K. Chakravarthy & Rakesh Khanna, pp. 115–116.)

“He broke off, and she fancied that he looked sad. She could not be sure, for the Machine did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people – an idea that was good enough for all practical purposes, Vashti thought. The imponderable bloom, declared by a discredited philosophy to be the actual essence of intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial fruit. Something ‘good enough’ had long since been accepted by our race.”

(E. M. Forster, “The Machine Stops,” pp. 5–6 in Fairy Tales for Computers, The Eakins Press, 1969.)

“Is it surprising that the people could see their fate and that of the world only as an endless succession of evils? Bad government, exactions, the cupidity and violence of the great, wars and brigandage, scarcity, misery and pestilence – to this is contemporary history nearly reduced in the eyes of the people. The feeling of general insecurity which was caused by the chronic form wars were apt to take, by the constant menace of the dangerous classes, by the mistrust of justice, was further aggravated by the obsession of the coming end of the world, and by the fear of hell, or sorcerers and devils. The background of all life in the world seems black. Everywhere the flames of hatred arise and injustice reigns. Satan covers a gloomy earth with his sombre wings. In vain the militant Church battles, preachers deliver their sermons; the world remains unconverted. According to a popular belief, current towards the end of the fourteenth century, no one, since the beginning of the great Western schism, had entered Paradise.”

(Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, pp. 30–31.)