“If one will just be still, shut up, and listen--lo, behold, the world'll sift through one's ideas for one, esp. in a grimy London railway station.”

“Your turn has come to sift through the dreck of humanity for rare specks of originality”

“People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.”

“This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.”

“London darkens the map like England's bowel polyp. There is a whole country up here.”

“Human life, Borges said, is a cascade of possible directions, and we take only one, or we perceive that we take only one—which is how novels are written, too. You start with a blank page, and the first word opens up possibilities for the second word. If your first word is Call, those second two or three could be a doctor or it could be me Ishmael. It could be Call girls on Saturday nights generally cost more than . . . The second sentence opens up a multitude of third sentences, and on we go through that denseness of choices taken and choices not taken, swinging our machetes.”

“He sifts the radio waves, but it's all men singing like women and women singing like men...”