“Can Protagonist think of a single film that interests him as much as the three-hundredth best book he ever read?”

“You can learn more by going to the opera than you ever can by reading Emerson. Like that there are two sexes.”

“Have I ever said that Turner once actually had himself lashed to the mast of a ship, to be able to later do a painting of a storm? Which has never failed to remind me of the scene in which Odysseus does the identical thing, of course, so that he can listen to the Sirens singing but will stay put.”

“How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?”

“Or was it possibly...nothing more than a read?”

“In fact one frequently seemed to gather all sorts of similar information about subjects one had less than profound interest in.”

“He had a face roughly the shape and color of a clumsily peeled Idaho potato, and he had a jaw like the end of a cigarette carton. ”