David

“On July 25, 1943, the day Mussolini fell, I was with Luce trying to shake off his objection to a long essay I had written for Fortune’s philosophy series on the vision of democracy according to Emerson, Melville, Whitman.”
― Alfred Kazin, NEW YORK JEW: An Autobiography

“the knowledge underlying civilization is so widespread today that complete annihilation would be more probable than a long period of darkness followed by recovery.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Visiting his neighbours’ apartments, he would find himself physically repelled by the contours of an award-winning coffee-pot, by the well-modulated colour schemes, by the good taste and intelligence that, Midas-like, had transformed everything in these apartments into an ideal marriage of function and design. In a sense, these people were the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future, boxed up in these expensive apartments with their elegant furniture and intelligent sensibilities, and no possibility of escape.”
― J.G. Ballard, High-Rise

“she would have been as smooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the palm.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady