“It's like having a head full of holes, in which the perfect repository of words have shamed themselves," he lamented.”

“There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.”

“An Allosaurus backbone had a hole in which a Stegosaurus thagomizer fitted perfectly. Over the years, many of the fossil thagomizers that have been dug up have had broken tips.”

“I have no sounds that could serve to soothe me, no violoncello like him, no lament that anyone would recognize as a lament because it sounds subdued, in an inexpressibly tender language. I have only these lines on the yellowish paper and words that are never new, for they keep saying the same thing through an entire life.”

“When Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor.”

“She would have thought a woman would have died of shame. Instead of which, the shame died.”