On Sense and Nonsense

The term nonsense is one of the most baffling words in our vocabulary. It has a negative quality only, like death. Nobody can explain nonsense: it can only be demonstrated. To add, moreover, that sense and nonsense are interchangeable is only to labor the point. Nonsense belongs to other worlds, other dimensions, and the gesture with which we put it from us at times, the finality with which we dismiss it, testifies to its disturbing nature. Whatever we can not include within our narrow framework of comprehension we reject. Thus profundity and nonsense may be seen to have certain unsuspected affinities. — Henry Miller, Sexus

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