“They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never dissapointed.”

“the run-down nature of the high-rise was a model of the world into which the future was carrying them, a landscape beyond technology where everything was either derelict or more ambiguously recombi...”

“In effect, the apartment block was a small vertical city, its two thousand inhabitants boxed up into the sky.j.g.”

“Even their insistence on educating their children, the last reflex of any exploited group before it sank into submission, marked the end of their resistance.”

“Togetherness is beating up an empty elevator.”

“He methodically basted the dark skin of the Alsatian, which he had stuffed with garlic and herbs."One rule in life", he murmured to himself. "If you can smell garlic, everything is all right".”

“Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.”

“Dissembling was so large a part of middle-class life that honesty and frankness seemed the most devious stratagem of all. The most outright lie was the closest one came to truth.”

“No one could have imagined the effects the Internet would have: theres a vast new intimacy and accidental poetry, not to mention the weirdest porn. The entire human experience seems to unveil itsel...”

“I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest -- blest beyond what language can express because I am my husband's life as fully as he is m...”

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

“When a woman thinks her husband is a fool, her marriage is over. They may part in one year or ten; they may live together until death. But if she thinks he is a fool, she will not love him again.”