"The thing is, they repeat themselves and repeat themselves but they never get
anywhere, they never seems to finish anything. Of course, I'm no better, I'm
just the same, I'm stuck on that wretched term paper. Once I went to the zoo
and there was a cage with this frenzied armadillo in it going around in
figure-eights, just around and around in the same path. I can still rememeber
the funny metallic sound its feet made on the bottom of the cage. They say all
caged animals get that way when they're caged, its a form of psychosis, and even
if you set the animals free after they go like that they'll just run around in
the same pattern. You read and read the material and after you've read the
twentieth article you can't make sense out of it anymore, and then you start
thinking about the number of books that are published in any given year, in
any given month, in any given week, and thats just too much...."
-Duncan, page 97-98
"The thing is...it's the inertia. You never feel you're getting anywhere;
you get bogged down in things, water-logged. Last week I set fire to the
apartment, partly on purpose. I think I wanted to see what they would do.
Maybe I wanted to see what I would do. Mostly though I just got
interested in seeing a few flames and some smoke, for a change. But they
just put it out, and then ran around in frenzied figure-eights like a
couple of armadilloes, talking about how I was 'sick'..."
-Duncan, page 101
'...stolid breadfaced buisnessmen most of them, gobbling food and swilling
a few drinks to get the interruption of lunch over with as soon and as
numbly as possible so they could get back to the office and make some money
and get that over with as soon as possible and get back through the rush hour
traffic to their homes and wives and dinners and to get those over with as
soon as possible too.'
-page 114
'She had bought all of the presents last weekend...but she no longer
felt like giving anybody anything. She felt even less like receiving,
having to thank them all for things she didn't need and would never
use; and it was no use telling herself, as she had been told all her
life, that it was in the spirit of the giver and not the value of the
gift that counted. That was worse: all the paper tags with Love on
them. The kind of love they were given with was also by now something
she didn't need and would never use.'
-page 174
-Margaret Atwood