Give us a catchphrase or a concept and we pounce on it, grind it down, wear it out, and leave it in pieces like a toy on Christmas morning without ever finding out what it was. This is how the Numbing of America works. It just so happens that we are surrounded by things surreal but we have lost the ability to react to them.
Florence King on America’s new catchword, “surreal,” National Review (May 17, 1999), reprinted in STET, Damnit! The Misanthrope’s Corner, 1991 – 2002 (2003), p. 302.
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Florence King
