Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human i

It strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place.

There is a moment of sheer panic when I realize that Paul's apartment overlooks the park... and is obviously more expensive than mine.

Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire -- meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathizing, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt any more. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in...this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged...