A process of accretion. Barnacles growing on a wreck or a rock. I’d rather have a wreck than a ship that sails. Things attach themselves to wrecks. Strange fish find your wreck or rock to be a good feeding ground; after a while you’ve got a situation with possibilities.

It is difficult to keep the public interested. The public demands new wonders piled on new wonders. Often we don’t know where our next marvel is coming from. The supply of strange ideas is not endless.

Goals incapable of attainment have driven many a man to despair, but despair is easier to get to than that – one need merely look out of the window, for example.

Well chaps first I’d like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it.

Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one’s situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are.

Of course we did everything right, insofar as we were able to imagine what “right” was.

Who among us is not thinking about divorce, except for a few tiny-minded stick-in-the-muds who don’t count?

Write about what you’re afraid of.

No man’s plenum, Mr. Quistgaard, is impervious to the awl of God’s will.

There was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the “meaning” of the balloon; this subsided, because we have learned not to insist on meanings, and they are rarely even looked for now, except in cases involving the simplest, safest phenomena.