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

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

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

“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.”

“You will say that I am old and mad, was what Michaelangelo wrote, but I answer that there is no better way of being sane and free from anxiety than by being mad.”

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

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