“Hugo is a raven,and, as such he knows many things. I, meanwhile, am Hodge Starkweathe, a professor of history, as such, I do not know nearly enough.”
“I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly enough and never will.”
“I am not a fiction reader. If I already do, I read fiction always more like the illustration of a philosophical-political thesis than a novel. My preference is history. If one does not know history, he is condemned to relive it.”
“I do not know everything; still many things I understand.”
“I am clever enough to know that I am clever.”
“Go away,” he said. “Do you know you’ve almost no clothes on?” “Never mind. I need—” “Never mind? Listen to me, Miss Innocence. There are many things a man can ‘never mind.’ A nearly naked woman isn’t one of them.”