“I jotted the name down mentally on that tattered notepad I call a memory. The pen skipped.”

“It's quite simple. I just don't feel right without a pen in my hand denting a hole through my notepad.”

“What I called jottings would not be a rendering of the text, not so to speak a translation with another symbolism. The text would not be stored up in the jottings. And why should it be stored up in our nervous system?”

“Have you finished your column for tomorrow's headline?" It was Vee. She came up beside me, jotting notes on the notepad she carried everywhere. "I'm thinking of writing mine on the injustice of seating charts. I got paired with a girl who said she just finished lice treatment this morning.”

“Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself--it is the occurring which is difficult.”

“The city was the perfect place, it was... Heaven. And when I got here people said: who are you? But I thought they were asking where so I said, Heaven.’Melrose sucks his pen. ‘And that became your name.’‘It’s not my name. It’s just what people call me.”