I Wasn't Convinced A Shop Girl Would

The United Nations Emerged As A Temple Of Official Good Intentions, A Place Where Governments Might - Without Abating Their Transgressions - Go To Church; A Place Made Remote - By Agreed Untruth And Procedural Complexity, And By Tedium Itself - From The Risk Of Intense Public Involvement.

It Is The Impulse Of Our Century, With Its Nearly Religious Belief In Magnitude, To Fling An Institution Into Every Void.

I Wasn't Convinced A Shop Girl Would Know The Word 'oedipal.

That Was The Trouble With Experience; It Taught You That Most People Were Capable Of Anything, So That Loyalty Was Never Quite On Firm Ground -- Or, Rather, Became A Matter Of Pardoning Offenses Instead Of Denying Their Existence.

Madness Might Sometimes Give Access To A Kind Of Knowledge. But Was Not A Guarantee.