“The maintenance of a complex society depends increasingly on routine work, work with no zest or creativity. The things we eat, clothes we wear, places we live become increasingly standardized, because standardization is the price we pay for the prices we are able to pay. Life ticks along for most of us like a Woolworth's alarm clock. We grow used to the rhythm imposed on us by our need to subsist: soon we get to like our bondage.”

--Anthony Burgess, “The Clockwork Condition: The author comments on his most famous book, in 1973,” in the June 4/11, 2012 issue of The New Yorker.

Happy Thursday.