Hazel Cline

“Not long ago-incredible though it may seem-I heard a clerk of Oxford declare that he 'welcomed' the proximity of mass-production robot factories, and the roar of self-obstructive traffic, because it brought his university into 'contact with real life.' He may have meant that the way men were living and working in the twentieth century was increasing in barbarity at an alarming rate, and that the loud demonstration of this in the streets of Oxford might serve as a warning that it is not possible to preserve for long an oasis of sanity in a desert of unreason by mere fences, without actual offensive action (practical and intellectual). I fear he did not. In any case the expression 'real life' in this context seems to fall short of academic standards. The notion that motor-cars are more 'alive' than, say, centaurs or dragons is curious; that they are more 'real' than, say, horses is pathetically absurd. How real, how startlingly alive is a factory chimney compared with an elm tree: poor obsolete thing, insubstantial dream of an escapist!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf: Includes Mythopoeia and The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth

“I love everything that is old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.”
― Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield

“A keener interest in trinkets of self-adornment than in people is a symptom of alienation.”
― Kōbō Abe, Kangaroo Notebook

“According to Fleetfin's research, if you sun-dry the sexual organs of a male and female squid and bring them into contact at the rate of three hundred fifty feet per fifteen seconds or less (the average running speed of a third-year junior high school student), you'll create an explosion surpassing dynamite.”
― Kōbō Abe, Kangaroo Notebook