“We see that in fact everybody who still has life and energy is continually manifesting some natural force and is today facing an unnatural coercion. And now, in some apparently trivial issue that nevertheless is a key, he draws the line! The next step for him to take is not obscure or difficult, it presents itself at once; it is even forcibly presented by Society! Modern society does not let one be–it is too total–it forces one’s hand.”
— Paul Goodman in Drawing the Line (1977)
“I ... go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man’s character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn’t any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.”
— Saul Bellow in The Adventures of Augie March (1949)