Along the streets that lead away from the apartment he can never see anything through the concrete and brick and neon but knows that buried within it are grotesque, twisted souls forever trying the manners that will convince themselves they have Quality,learning strange poses of style and glamour vended by dream magazines and other mass media, and paid for by the vendors of substance. He thinks of them at night alone with their advertised glamorous shoes and stockings and underclothes off, staring through the sooty windows at the grotesque shells revealed beyond them, when the poses weaken and the truth creeps in, the only truth that exists here, crying to heaven, God, there is nothing here but dead neon and cement and brick.

-taken from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance