A Number Of Things In Dhalgren Are

The Problem Isn't To Learn To Love Humanity, But To Learn To Love Those Members Of It Who Happen To Be At Hand.

Now For Me, You're The Irreplaceable One: I've Never See You Up So Close Before, And I Do Not Understand You At All. You Say Sometimes I Act Like I Don't See You? I Don't Even Know Where To Look! Living With You Around Is Like Is Like Living With A Permanent Dazzle. The Fact That You Even Like Me, Or Look At Me, Or Brush By Me, Or Hug Me, Or Hold Me, Is So Surprising That After It's Over I Have To Go Back Through It A Dozen Times In My Head To Savor It And Try And Figure Out What It Was Like Because I Was Too Busy Being Astounded While It Was Happening.

The Strange Machinery By Which A Reputation Precedes Its Source We All Know Is Faulty. Yet How Much Faith We Put In It!

There Is No Articulate Resonance. The Common Problem, I Suppose, Is To Have More To Say Than Vocabulary And Syntax Can Bear. That Is Why I Am Hunting In These Desiccated Streets. The Smoke Hides The Sky's Variety, Stains Consciousness, Covers The Holocaust With Something Safe And Insubstantial. It Protects From Greater Flame. It Indicates Fire, But Obscures The Source. This Is Not A Useful City. Very Little Here Approaches Any Eidolon Of The Beautiful.

The General Public Is A Statistical Fiction Created By A Few Exceptional Men To Make The Loneliness Of Being Exceptional A Little Easier To Bear.