We Live In An Age In Which

The Instant That The Blade Tore Open His Flesh, The Bright Disk Of The Sun Soared Up And Exploded Behind His Eyelids.

True Beauty Is Something That Attacks, Overpowers, Robs, And Finally Destroys.

Dreams, Memories, The Sacred--they Are All Alike In That They Are Beyond Our Grasp. Once We Are Even Marginally Separated From What We Can Touch, The Object Is Sanctified; It Acquires The Beauty Of The Unattainable, The Quality Of The Miraculous. Everything, Really, Has This Quality Of Sacredness, But We Can Desecrate It At A Touch. How Strange Man Is! His Touch Defiles And Yet He Contains The Source Of Miracles.

Young People Get The Foolish Idea That What Is New For Them Must Be New For Everybody Else Too. No Matter How Unconventional They Get, They're Just Repeating What Others Before Them Have Done.

Suddenly The Full Long Wail Of A Ship's Horn Surged Through The Open Window And Flooded The Dim Room—a Cry Of Boundless, Dark, Demanding Grief; Pitch-black And Glabrous As A Whale's Back And Burdened With All The Passions Of The Tides, The Memory Of Voyages Beyond Counting, The Joys, The Humiliations: The Sea Was Screaming.