Gregory Knapp

“In a garden, things grow . . . but first, they must wither; trees have to lose their leaves in order to put forth new leaves, and to grow thicker and stronger and taller. Some trees die, but fresh saplings replace them. Gardens need a lot of care. But if you love your garden, you don’t mind working in it, and waiting. Then in the proper season you will surely see it flourish.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, Being There

“But now the emphasis has shifted to making it. People have surrendered their personal moral objectives to government or schools or psychologists. It’s a change that accelerated with the boom after the war. . . . There has been a surrender to pragmatism; the true is what makes you successful and the false is what makes you fail. But I wonder what happens to faith, hope and charity in such a situation? People began to form their moral ideas not in the old way but by their professions and guilds; that tends to transfer sin to the corporation.”
― Saul Bellow

“As far as my connection to other people went, I was usually affectionate. I was usually fond of the people I met: the privileged. And I’m still fond of them. I know them well. It’s easy for me to see them not as others might see them, as a group of people who fundamentally are all the same, because as holders of privilege the all play fundamentally the same social role, but as they see themselves: as remarkably distinct individuals with different opinions, thoughts, and characteristics. I know very well that they suffer, I know that they’re lonely, they’re lost, they’re desperate, whatever.”
― Wallace Shawn, Essays

“Zet and Lottie swam into New York City from the skies—that was how it felt in the Pacemaker, rushing along the Hudson at sunrise. First many blue twigs overhanging the water, than a rosy color, and then the heavy flashing of the river under the morning sun. They were in the dining car, their eyes were heavy. They were drained by a night of broken sleep in the day coach, and they were dazzled. They drank coffee from cups as heavy as soapstone, and poured from New York Central pewter. They were in the East, where everything was better, where objects were different. Here there was deeper meaning in the air.

After changing at Harmon to an electric locomotive, they began a more quick and eager ride. Trees, water, sky, and the sky raced off, floating, and there came bridges, structures, and at last the tunnel, where the air breaks gasped and the streamliner was checked. There were yellow bulbs in wire mesh, and subterranean air came through the vents. The doors opened, the passengers, pulling their clothing straight, flowed out and got their luggage, and Zet and Lottie, reaching Forty-second Street, refugees from arid and inhibited Chicago, from Emptyland, embraced at the curb and kissed each other repeatedly on the mouth. They had come to the World City, where all behavior was deeper and more resonant, where they could freely be themselves, as demonstrative as they liked. Intellect, art, the transcendent, needed no excuses here. Any cabdriver understood, Zet believed.”
― Saul Bellow, Him With His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories