"After the stolidity of my childhood - the affluent Midwest of new Cadillacs, Negro maids, and wineless six o'clock dinners - the sheer effrontery of these painters staying up all night and stretching canvas tight as drumheads, then thumping them with brushes, crayons, charcoal, finally smearing the whole mess away with rags - that thrilled my timid heart." p. 7

"... the mid-fifties ... was a time and place where there was little consumption of culture and no dissent, not in appearance, belief or behavior ... everyone ate the same food, wore the same clothe, and people decided whether they were Democrats or Republicans. The three most heinous crimes known to man were Communism, heroin addiction, and homosexuality." p. 10

"[America] felt, at least to me, like a big gray country of families on drowsy holiday ... where there was no question of talking about the self and its discontent, isolation, self-hatred, and burning...