[T]he departing world leaves behind… not an heir, but a pregnant widow. – Alexander Ivanovich Herzen, Other Shore

Sometimes I have to stand on my head to see things as they are, when the world seems so upside-down that this is the only position in which anything makes sense. – Author unknown

We are never prepared for what we expect. – James A. Michener, Caravans

Take the so-called standard of living. What do most people mean by “living”? They don’t mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science, in its finite but unbounded wisdom, has succeeded in selling their wives. – e.e. cummings, Introduction, Poems, 1954