"She considered her life: each aspect rested on another, was undercut by its arbitrary predecessor in a deconstructive chain leading back to the blank canvas, to defenseless impulse and unjustifiable whim. She felt seduced by despair, felt a void opening before her; what was this void? The apparition of suicide, the specter of her own death? No, it was the nothingness stretching forever beneath the seemingly concrete aspects of her existence, the eternal blank canvas upon which she had enacted her life (and to which she would eventually return)..." - from The Sirens The interconnected lives...

"Yes, sentimentality: that phenomenon by which the emotional need of the viewer takes precedent over the reality of the object; sentimentality: the excessive and inappropriate infusion of meaning, the incorrect alignment of form and content; sentimentality: a child's perception, the stain of immaturity, sister to stereotype, father of prejudice, the soul of dramatic irony What happiness: to surrender the child's frantic and broad assertions about the world for the nuance and subtlety of true understanding What joy: to abandon these delusions, to marry form with content, to live without...