“Bless them all, the forlorn little rabbits. They are the displaced persons of our emotional culture. They are ravenous for romance, yet settle for what they call making out. Their fu­tile, acne-pitted men drift out of high school into a world so surfeited with unskilled labor there is competition for bag-boy jobs in the su­permarkets. They yearn for security but all they can have is what they make for them­selves, chittering little flocks of them in the restaurants and stores, talking of style and adornment, dreaming of the terribly sincere stranger who will come along and lift them out of the gypsy life of the two-bit tip and the un­employment, cut a tall cake with them, swell them up with sassy babies, and guide them masterfully into the shoal water of the electri­fied house where everybody brushes after ev­ery meal. But most of the wistful rabbits marry their unskilled men, and keep right on work­ing. And discover the end of the dream. They have been taught that if you are sunny, cheery, sincere, group-adjusted, popular, the world is yours, including barbecue pits, charge plates, diaper service, percale sheets, friends for din­ner, washer-dryer combinations, color slides of the kiddies on the home projector, and eter­nal whimsical romance-with crinkly smiles and Rock Hudson dialogue. So they all come smiling and confident and unskilled into a technician’s world, and in a few years they learn that it is all going to be grinding and brutal and hateful and precarious. These are the slums of the heart. Bless the bunnies. These are the new people, and we are making no place for them. We hold the dream in front of them like a carrot, and finally say sorry you can’t have any. And the schools where we teach them non-survival are gloriously archi­tectured. They will never live in places so fine, unless they contract something incurable.”

(The Deep Blue Good-By, John D. MacDonald, 1960)