“I also believe I met William Gaddis once. He did not look Italian.”

“Tennessee Williams choked to death on the plastic cap of a nasal spray.”

“Once, Turner had himself lashed to the mast of a ship for several hours, during a furious storm, so that he could later paint the storm. Obviously, it was not the storm itself that Turner intended to paint. What he intended to paint was a representation of the storm. One's language is frequently imprecise in that manner, I have discovered.”

“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.”

“If forced to choose, Giacometti once said, he would rescue a cat from a burning building before a Rembrandt.”

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

“Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover...or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?”