Allusion has been made to [Proust's] contempt for the literature that "describes," for the realists and naturalists worshipping th...e offal of experience, prostrate before the epidermis and the swift epilepsy, and content to transcribe the surface, the façade, behind which the Idea is prisoner.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Anyone having that dual familiarity with prewar small towns and modern shopping malls will ... be repelled by the comparison. A pr...eoccupation with physical facades coupled with a lack of sociological insight is common among the mall's many fans.... Totally unlike Main Street, the shopping mall is populated by strangers. As people circulate about in the constant, monotonous flow of mall pedestrian traffic, their eyes do not cast about for familiar faces, for the chance of seeing one is small. That is not part of what one expects there. The reason is simple. The mall is centrally located to serve the multitudes from a number of outlying developments within its region. There is little acquaintance between these developments and not much more within them. Most of them lack focal points or core settings and, as a result, people are not widely known to one another, even in their own neighborhoods, and their neighborhood is only a minority portion of the mall's clientele.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are compelled by the theory of God's already achieved perfection to make Him a devil as well as a god, because of the existence... of evil. The god of love, if omnipotent and omniscient, must be the god of cancer and epilepsy as well.... Whoever admits that anything living is evil must either believe that God is malignantly capable of creating evil, or else believe that God has made many mistakes in His attempts to make a perfect being.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Out of the focal and foremost fire, Our of the hospital walls as dire;... Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene, (Eighteenth battle, and he sixteen!) Specter! such as you seldom see, Little Giffen, of Tennessee!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »