Mockingbird

I feel free and strong. If I were not a reader of books I could not feel this way. Whatever may happen to me, thank God that I can read, that I have truly touched the minds of other men.

Reading is too intimate,' Spofforth said. 'It will put you too close to the feelings and ideas of others. It will disturb and confuse you.

Reading is the subtle and thorough sharing of the ideas and feelings by underhanded means. It is a gross invasion of Privacy and a direct violation of the Constitutions of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Age. The Teaching of Reading is equally a crime against Privacy and Personhood. One to five years on each count.

It all began, I suppose, with learning to build fires—to warm the cave and keep the predators out. And it ended with time-release Valium.

I am human. I talk and I listen and I read.

New York is nearly a grave. The Empire State Building is its gravestone.

If I cannot read and learn and have things that are worth thinking about, I would rather immolate myself than go on living. Synthetic

They were willing to accept their stringent piety, and silence, and sexual restraints, all unthinkingly, along with a few platitudes about Jesus and Moses and Noah; they were overwhelmed, however, at the effort it would require to understand the literature that was the real source of their religion. I

The Age of Technology has rusted.

It feels terrible. Being in love feels terrible. I