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Moreover, we work in a limited-attention economy . . . , as most people broadcast more than they receive. Different aspiring exemplars must compete for the approval of a highly inattentive crowd. Social interactions become a complex, competitive game of pride, envy and ambition, where the stake is survival—survival . . . meaning retention of identity. Influencing others becomes integral to its goal. Not only does this lead to rivalry and conflict; it leads to frustration. What we wanted was our own identity. What we keep finding is somebody else's, and maintaining it feels less like self-expression than pandering to the crowd. [Those who threaten our identity] take the blame for a failure whose real explanation lies in the fundamental inconsistency of our aim. They remind us of the embarrassing arbitrariness of what we take to be essential—of our ontological unoriginality, our essential emptiness.

“Try to meet a poem on its terms not yours. If you have to “relate” to a poem in order to understand it, you aren’t reading it sufficiently. In other words, don’t try to fit the poem into your life. Try to see what world the poem creates. Then, if you are lucky, its world will help you re-see your own.”

“Suppression always destroys first what is gentle and benevolent; it inspires rage and reaction, encourages malevolence and magic, and so creates the very thing which, theoretically, it would destroy.”