Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se.

This appetite to choose death by pleasure if it is available to choose - this appetite of your people unable to choose appetites, this is the death.

One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism.

The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.

You only value something if you know it’ll end.

The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.