“Abstracting them is a fantasy of convenience, of course; like creatures who live in the sea, or the brains in our heads, they cannot be so easily abstracted from their native contexts and relationships without immediately becoming something somewhat other than what they are. Yet the humans are deeply confused by this matter. They think that, as an example, a brain exists. There never was such a monster. There never will be. Except, of course, for humans, as a figure of thought — a set of boundaries; a constellation of suggestions, enclosures, connotations, implications, inhibitions, promotions, prohibitions — all in a strange and cryptic system that must by its own nature be at least as conflicted with itself and delusional as it is effective. And this is their station, their mantra… indeed, their sacred mandate.”

— an anonymous informant