We are to design a highway system for New York City; a kettle for use in the technical and cultural environment provided by metropolitan U.S.A. of 1965; a new town, for 30,000 people, forty miles from London. The context, in these cases, is fixed, and will remain constant for the duration of the problem; it may therefore be described in as much detail as possible. On the other hand, the nature of the required form is uncertain. It may be given a name, perhaps, like "kettle" or "town," to make the problem specific; but one of the designer's first tasks will be to strip the problem of the preconceptions which such names introduce.

—Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form

DALTON: But that's not it. It was more like this. This cup (Takes his drinking cup, calmly kneels and breaks it on the floor...) Look. This was sand and heat. Not long ago. Other things, too. Pieces and bits. And now. It's something else. Glass. Blood. And it's broken. . . . I could cut you open with it.

—Naomi Wallace, "Trestle at Pope Lick Creek"

Common sense is the set of all prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

—Albert Einstein