“Will I have to use a dictionary to read your book?" asked Mrs. Dodypol. "It depends," says I, "how much you used the dictionary before you read it.”

“I thought... their elegance... lies not so much in their clothes as in their bodies, and their bodies have received it, and continue to unceasingly receive it, from their souls, which are just like yours, lovely Simonetta.”

“Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book they have read. Once of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.”

“If on a friend’s bookshelfYou cannot find Joyce or SterneCervantes, Rabelais, or Burton,You are in danger, face the fact,So kick him first or punch him hardAnd from him hide behind a curtain.”

“The complexity of language, he thought to himself, lies not in its subject matter but in our knotted understanding.”

“The best reason for disbelieving in God is that he never gave us enough time in life to pursue enough knowledge to find sufficient truth.”

“Ordinary persons, he said, smiling, found no differences between men. The artist found them all.”