“But this is something new!' said Mrs. Munt, who collected new ideas as a squirrel collects nuts, and was especially attracted by those that are portable.”

“There's something narcissistic in the phrase "collected poems." Who's collecting them? The poem. How hard is that? That's not a real collection. Now if he had made a collection of water fountains, or of oven mitts, that would be a collection. Or if he'd collected editions of Festus, the long mad poem written somewhere in the nineteenth century by a lost soul named Bailey--that would be an achievement. But collecting your own poems? What's so great about that? And mixing and mingling them in with some new? New and and Collected Poems? Oh, well! Good job. Nice going.”

“Thus, words being symbols of ideas, we can collect ideas by collecting words. The fellow who said he tried reading the dictionary but couldn't get the hang of the story simply missed the point: namely, that it is a collection of short stories.”

“New York is the biggest collection of villages in the world.”

“I collect new books the way my girlfriends buy designer handbags.”

“What's your dad do? I said. Designs new and better wings for new and better sing nuts, he said proudly. It sounded like he was repeating something a sarcastic adult had said.”