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

He who does not fill his world with phantoms remains alone. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin