'The easy possibility of letter-writing must--seen merely theoretically--have brought into the world a terrible disintegration of souls. It is, in fact, an intercourse with ghosts, and not only with the ghost of the recipient but also with one's own ghost which develops between the lines of the letter one is writing and even more so in a series of letters where one letter corroborates the other and can refer to it as a witness. How on earth did anyone get the idea that people can communicate with one another by letter! Of a distant person one can think, and of a person who is near one can catch hold--all else goes beyond human strength. Writing letters, however, means to denude oneself before the ghosts, something for which they greedily wait. Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts. It is on this ample nourishment that they multiply so enormously. Humanity senses this and fights against it and in order to eliminate as far as possible the ghostly element between people and to create a natural communication, the peace of souls, it has invented the railway, the motor car, the aeroplane. But it's no longer any good, these are evidently inventions being made at the moment of crashing. The opposing side is so much calmer and stronger; after the postal service it has invented the telegraph, the telephone, the radiograph. The ghosts won't starve, but we will perish.' --Letters to Milena

"On December 6, 1982, at 4:00 p.m., I met with President Reagan and his daughter Patti Davis for seventy-five minutes... He seemed continually to have his own agenda and didn't appear to listen much or to consider seriously my statements or replies. ...He quoted some material saying that the freeze campaign was orchestrated by Russia and that we were KGB dupes. I looked at him and said, 'That's from the Reader's Digest.' He shook his head and said, 'No, it's not; it's from my intelligence files.' If I am not badly mistaken, it was copied straight from the John Barron article in the October 1982 issue of< i>Reader's Digest." --Dr Helen Caldicott, Missile Envy (1986 ed.)

'I am steel; I am a druid.
I am an artificer; I am a scientific one.
I am a serpent; I am love; I will indulge in feasting.
I am not a confused bard drivelling...
I am a cell, I am a cleft, I am a restoration,
I am the depository of song; I am a literary man...
I am a bard of the hall, I am a chick of the chair.'
--Book of Taliessen III. in: William F Skene, The Four Ancient Books of Wales (1868)