from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintence

 ...which is a good book, though its not all about zen and motorcycles. Now I don't read reviews or even the book's summary on the back cover. The experience is better when you don't know anything about it.

Along the streets that lead away from the apartment he can never see anything through the concrete and brick and neon but he knows that buried within it are grotesque, twisted souls forever trying the manners that convince themselves they possess Quality, learning strange poses of style and glamor vended by dream magazines and other mass media, and paid for by the vendors of substance. He thinks of them alone at night with their advertised glamorous shoes and stockings and underclothes off, staring through the sooty windows and grotesque shells revealed beyond them, when the poses weaken and the truth creeps in, the only truth that exists here, crying to Heaven, God, there is nothing here but dead neon and cement and brick.
-Robert Pirsig