Vinnie Tesla

“Fiction inhabits the zone between the real and the impossible. The tug of those two poles is what gives it motion, vitality. Tethering fiction too tightly to the real produces plodding, lifeless stories. Letting it float too far from that anchor produces stories that are arbitrary and unpersuasive.”

“Our culture teaches that sex is for the sexy, and the only way to be sexy is to be pretty. No wait--that's still too weak. Sex should properly arise from sexiness. For unsexy people--fat people, old people, funny-looking people, disabled people--to even feel sexual desire is inappropriate, perverse, disgusting. For them to engage in sexual display is offensive. For them to have sex...well, there oughta be a law.”

“Tesla,” the vicar mused. “That’s a foreign name, is it not? Hungarian,is it?”“Serbian,” I corrected him. “I’m afraid the ——shire Teslas are ascant three centuries in these parts, having constructed Tesla Hall inthe reign of Queen Elizabeth.We are a restless people, and no doubtwill be moving on again any century now.”

“I work hard to stay cynical enough! I keep my expectations of our culture and our leaders low, low, low, and I do it so I don't have to be let down. And yet again I am lowballed by the brokenness of the American cultural machine.”