I Admired Anyone Who Could

In A Completely Sane World, Madness Is The Only Freedom.

The American Dream Has Run Out Of Gas. The Car Has Stopped. It No Longer Supplies The World With Its Images, Its Dreams, Its Fantasies. No More. It's Over. It Supplies The World With Its Nightmares Now: The Kennedy Assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.

I Don't Think Any Particular Painters Have Inspired Me, Except In A General Sense. It Was More A Matter Of Corroboration. The Visual Arts, From Manet Onwards, Seemed Far More Open To Change And Experiment Than The Novel, Though That's Only Partly The Fault Of The Writers. There's Something About The Novel That Resists Innovation.

We Live In A World Ruled By Fictions Of Every Kind - Mass Merchandising, Advertising, Politics Conducted As A Branch Of Advertising, The Instant Translation Of Science And Technology Into Popular Imagery, The Increasing Blurring And Intermingling Of Identities Within The Realm Of Consumer Goods, The Preempting Of Any Free Or Original Imaginative Response To Experience By The Television Screen. We Live Inside An Enormous Novel.

The Reptiles Had Taken Over The City. Once Again They Were The Dominant Form Of Life. Looking Up At The Ancient Impassive Faces, Kerans Could Understand The Curious Fear They Roused, Rekindling Archaic Memories Of The Terrifying Jungles Of The Paleocene, When The Reptiles Had Gone Down Before The Emergent Mammals, And Sense The Implacable Hatred One Zoological Class Feels Towards Another That Usurps It.