Nick Adams

“The same nursery rhyme comments on the consequences of the fall of Humpty-Dumpty. That is the point about the King’s horses and men. They, too, are fragmented and specialized. Having no unified vision of the whole, they are helpless. Humpty-Dumpty is an obvious example of integral wholeness. The mere existence of the wall already spelt his fall. James Joyce in Finnegans Wake never ceases to interlace these themes, and the title of the work indicates his awareness that “a-stone-aging” as it may be, the electric age is recovering the unity of plastic and iconic space, and is putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again.”
― Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

“The stars are so big,
The Earth is so small,
Stay as you are.”
― Marshall McLuhan, The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects

“Do you remember, darling
A year ago today
When we gave ourselves to each other
Before you went away
At the end of that pleasant summer weather
Which we had spent by the sea together?

How little we knew, my darling,
All that the year would bring!
Did I think of the wretched mornings
When I should kiss my ring
And long with all my heart to see
The girl who gave the ring to me?

We have not been sorry darling
We loved each other so-
We will not take back the promises
We made a year ago-

And so again, my darling
I give myself to you,
With graver thought than a year ago
With love that is deep and true.”
― Sarah Orne Jewett

“Satire,” said Swift, “is a glass in which we see every countenance but our own.”
― Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man