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1 " Writing … is an addiction, an illusory release, a presumptuous taming of reality, a way of expressing lightly the unbearable. That we age and leave behind this litter of dead, unrecoverable selves is both unbearable and the commonest thing in the world — it happens to everybody. In the morning light one can write breezily, without the slight acceleration of one’s pulse, about what one cannot contemplate in the dark without turning in panic to God. In the dark one truly feels that immense sliding, that turning of the vast earth into darkness and eternal cold, taking with it all the furniture and scenery, and the bright distractions and warm touches, of our lives. Even the barest earthly facts are unbearably heavy, weighted as they are with our personal death. Writing, in making the world light — in codifying, distorting, prettifying, verbalizing it — approaches blasphemy. "
― John Updike , Self-Consciousness
2 " The Hollywooden heads would buy a car for almost any purpose except a worthy one. Many automobiles were purchased to attract members of LA's eight or ten opposite sexes. Since the denizens of America's Gomorrah, were incapable of verbalizing any idea more complex than " box office gross," the expensive car served as a substitute for witty come-on and seductive chat. "
3 " People who are diagnosed as having " generalized anxiety disorder" are afflicted by three major problems that many of us experience to a lesser extent from time to time. First and foremost, says Rapgay, the natural human inclination to focus on threats and bad news is strongly amplified in them, so that even significant positive events get suppressed. An inflexible mentality and tendency toward excessive verbalizing make therapeutic intervention a further challenge. "
4 " Working rightly, the brain is the highest form of " instinctual wisdom." Thus it should work like the homing instinct of pigeons and the formation of the foetus in the womb - without verbalizing the process of knowing " how" it does it. The self-conscious brain, like the self-conscious heart, is a disorder, and manifests itself in the acute feeling of separation between " I" and my experience. "
