“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?”

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

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

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

“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.”

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