I did not realise that when money becomes the core value, then education drives towards utility or that the life or the mind will not be counted as good unless it produces measurable results. That public services will no longer be important. That an alternative life to getting and spending will become very difficult as cheap housing disappears. That when communities are destroyed only misery and intolerance are left.

And I know few would believe me but belief is what drives a man,If all of us long for the Golden Age, then we all can,Bring the days filled with peace, prosperity, generosity, love and fearless nigh',We all must believe something to survive, I believe in the serene age lost in seasons gone by.

[Charles] Nodier’s later view was that fantasy reconciles men to their fate. Fantasy and the taste for chimeras, he wrote, are symptoms of a time of political decay and transition, when the unpleasant realities of political life are too hard to bear. They serve a useful purpose in that they give men hope when scepticism and disillusion would otherwise drive them to despair.

They're events you remember all your life, like your first real orgasm. And the whole purpose of the absurd, mechanically persistent involvement with recorded music is the pursuit of that priceless moment. So it's not exactly that records might unhinge the mind, but rather that if anything is going to drive you up the wall it might as well be a record.

I didn’t ask for your help,” I muttered, too exhausted to properly argue. “So fuck you.”An alarm bell went off in my head and I bit back a sigh. I swore I sensed the mischievous grin that inevitably crossed his lips.“I already did you.”It was going to be a long drive.

For who was in thrall to whom, really? And could it ever be known? Each agent working in collusion and antagonism - like the cold and the sun alike creating a deadly spear of ice... Who is in thrall to whom? And while you wait to learn, the deadly icicle, formed by all opposing forces, falls and drives its cold nail into penetrable flesh.

“We need to grow our town. We have growth potential here. If we can get everything we need here, we won't have to drive 30 miles to get it somewhere else. If we have jobs here, we won't need to commute out of town. If we stay here, we will grow.”

“Everywhere you turn, Americans are enjoying a more active lifestyle and using more than just the family car to get them around. Whether they're driving down the highway or riding down the fairway, we want customers to know they're well protected by The Hartford, one of the nation's oldest and most trusted names in insurance.”

There's a feeling of power in reserve, a power that drives right through the bone, like the shiver you sense in the shaft of an axe when you take it into your hand. You can strike, or you can not strike, and if you choose to hold back the blow, you can still feel inside you the resonance of the omitted thing.

When his writing is going well, Gordon Strangle Mars likes to wake up at 6 a.m. and go out driving. He works out new plot lines about giant spiders and keeps an eye out for abandoned couches, which he wrestles into the back of his pickup truck. Then he writes for the rest of the day.