“There are these books that I’m never gonna read. They’re filled with equations. I don’t know how to read those things. All my life I’ve felt this large set of gears out there, just turning and churning and grinding away-it’s a machine of fate. I can’t see it. I can only sometimes hear it. I always feel it. It’s out there. I could switch it off if I could read the equations. I know that’s how it would work. But I just can’t get my head around those equations. I don’t even know where to start. And even if I started right now, kept at it, made steady progress-I’m too old to get it together in a timely fashion. I’ve already gone too far down this road of Sunday Funnies, and Sports Sections, and Box Office Top Tens, and Latest Movie Reviews, and Political Opinion Commentaries, and Society Pages, and Celebutante Gossip, and White House Scandals, and Forever Wars in the Middle East-the equations got me right where they want me. They profiled me as the Ultimate Reader of their Precision Narrative Outputs. I’m in my Proper Position. As per the equations. This is where they need me to be. And I’m grateful to have a place where I belong.”
