“It's like term papers, you produce all that stuff and nothing is ever done with it, you just get a grade for it and heave it in the trash, you know that some other poor comma-counter is going to come along the year after you and have to do the same thing over again, it's a treadmill, even ironing, you iron the damn things and then you wear them and they get all wrinkled again.”

“Well, and then you can iron them again, can't you?” Marian said soothingly. “If they stayed neat you wouldn't have anything to do.”

“Maybe I do something worthwhile for a change,” [Duncan] said. […] “Production-consumption. You begin to wonder whether it isn't just a question of making one kind of garbage into another kind. The human mind was the last to be commercialized but they're doing a good job of it now.”