After decades of absolute hunger in the Gulag, he perceived the hunger for books as the condition of his childhood, the condition of his whole life. His primal hunger was such that no number of books could ever slake it. There is no sweeter thing, he said, than the sight of an unread book. (p. 269)

"It's counterpart in art is post-modernism, which is the mad cow disease of a culture forced to feed on its own powdered bones." -Victor Pelevin, The Helmet of Horror, p. 210