“Numbers constitute the only universal language.”

“But the romantic atmosphere only heightened his feeling of icy fatness.”

“Only those who still have hope can benefit from tears.”

“Like a dead man, only friction could make him warm or violence make him mobile.”

“I'm going to be a star some day," she announced as though daring him to contradict her."I'm sure you...""It's my life. It's the only thing in the whole world that I want.""It's good to know what you want. I used to be a bookkeeper in a hotel,but...""If I'm not, I'll commit suicide.”

“You once said to me that I talk like a man in a book. I not only talk, but think and feel like one. I have spent my life in books; literature has deeply dyed my brain its own colour. This literary colouring is a protective one--like the brown of the rabbit or the checks of the quail--making it impossible for me to tell where literature ends and I begin.”

“...all these things were part of the business of dreams. He had learned not to laugh at the advertisements offering to teach writing, cartooning, engineering, to add inches to the biceps and to develop the bust”