Irresponsible Meanderings

Three passages from Walter Abish's novel, How German Is It:

. . . the mind is so created that it habitually sets up standards of perfection for everything: for marriage and for driving, for love affairs and for garden furniture, for table tennis and for gas ovens, for faces and for something as petty as the weather. And then, having established these standards, it sets up other standards of comparison, which serve, if nothing else, to confirm in the minds of most people that a great many things are less than perfect. (p. 19)

. . . often what people had to say about themselves became, in time, an impediment. (p. 41)

One had so little control over the irresponsible meanderings of one's brain, over the improbable connections that are activated as thoughts by impulses from the brain, yet, occasionally, these remote, farfetched, hypothetical links had a way of coming true. Almost anything the brain can conjure up is possible. (p. 43)