“I refuse to "look up." Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.”

“Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking. ”

“I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.”

“Canned food is a perversion,' Ignatius said. 'I suspect that it is ultimately very damaging to the soul.”

“Social Note: I have sought escape in the Prytania on more than one occasion, pulled by the attractions of some technicolored horrors, filmed abortions that were offenses against any criteria of taste and decency, reels and reels of perversion and blasphemy that stunned my disbelieving eyes, the shocked my virginal mind, and sealed my valve.”

“Had that poor Reilly kook really been proud of Levy Pants? He had always said that he was. That was one good sign of his insanity.”

“It smells terrible in here.'Well, what do you expect? The human body, when confined, produces certain odors which we tend to forget in this age of deodorants and other perversions. Actually, I find the atmosphere of this room rather comforting. Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.”