“The New York Times Review of Books is toilet paper. Used.”

“She passed her New York Reviews on to Troy without giving them a glance; she told him she thought there was something perverted about book reviews that were longer than the books they were reviewing.”

“I want to publish a book on toilet paper—not only about toilet paper, but actually print it on toilet paper. That way nobody will be surprised by how shitty my book is.”

“There's a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word "banal" sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say "underedited," I say "derivative." The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.”

“Ads answered out of desperation in the New York Review of Books proved equally futile as…the 'Bay Area Bisexual' told me I didn't quite coincide with either of her desires.”

“New York, like London, seems to be a cloacina [toilet] of all the depravities of human nature.”