I pluck quotations like a benumbed nature-lover would pluck rare flowers, roots and all, and I press them with pleasure and awe between the dry pages of my Residua, a bulging herbarium of uprooted thought. I am an almost innocent collector of truth and beauty and hope. True, I am also ashamed of my collection, of my drive to assemble ever so slightly irrelevant species, and of my lack of obliterating talent that would presumably transcend it, the shame, but I still find a tinge of this sensation so enticing, so promising. Perhaps it signals, all by itself, that a climax of self-love and self-preservation has already been reached by my fellow humans, as well? Perhaps it ushers an era of celebration of the species as species? Perhaps the flowers have reached maturity and will finally bear fruit—any day now?