White Noise (Environment)

The Sunset

"Another postermoden sunset, rich in romantic imagery. Why try to describe it? It's enough to say that everything in our field of vision seemed to exist in order to gather the light of this event. Not that this was one of the stronger sunsets. There has been more dynamic colors, a deeper sense of narrative sweep." (227)

"The sky takes on content, feeling, an exalted narrative life" 324

"we don't know whether we are watching in wonder or dread" 324

"The sky is under a spell, powerful and storied" 325

The Super Market

"But the supermarket did not change, except for the better. It was well-stocked, musical and bright. This was the key, it seemed to us. Everything was fine, would continue to be fine, would eventually get even better as long as the supermarket did not slip." (170)

"The supermarket shelves have been rearranged...They walk in a fragmented trance...trying to figure out the pattern discern the underlying logic...There is a sense of wandering now...ware of a second level of betrayal" 325-6

The Cloud

"This death would penetrate, seep into the genes, show itself in bodies not yet born" (116)

"the immense toxic cloud, lighted now by eighteen choppers—immense almost beyond comprehension, beyond legend and rumor, a roiling bloated slug-shaped mass. It seemed to be generating its own inner storms. There were cracklings and sputterings, flashes of light" (157)

"We are the sum total of our data, I told her, just as we are the sum total of our chemical impulses." (202)


Misc

"Isn't death the boundary we need? Doesn't it give a precious texture to life, a sense of definition? You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of the final line, a border or limit." (229)

"There was a charm and a native sense to the rows of slanted vehicles. This form of parking was an indispensable part of the American townscape...The arrangement was not only practical but avoided confrontation, the sexual assault motif of front-to-back parking in teeming city streets...Murray says it is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there...It made me think of the Law of Ruins...built of special materials, allowing it to crumble romantically...The ruin is built into the creation" (257-8)

"I'm technically dead. My body is growing a nebulous mass. they track these things like satellites. All this as a result of a byproduct of insecticide. There's something artificial about my death. It's shallow, unfulfilling. I don't belong to the earth of sky. They ought to carve an aerosol can on my tombstone" (282)

"Technology is lust removed from nature" (285)

"But isn't repression unnatural? / "Fear is unnatural. Lightning and thunder are unnatural. Pain, death, reality, these are all unnatural. We can't bear these things as they are. We know too much. So we resort to repression, compromise and disguise. This is how we survive in the universe. This is the natural language of the species" (289)

"But repression is totally false and mechanical. Everybody knows that. We're not supposed to deny our nature." / "It's natural to deny our nature...It's the whole point of being different from animals" (296)