“Clearly Mr. Drkh has had a long career of being the weirdest person in any given room, but he's about to go down in flames.”

“It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.”

“I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant.”

“There is also the story about Tyrone Slothrop, who was sent into the Zone to be present as his own assembley--perhaps heavily paranoid voices whisper, 'his time's assembley'--and there ought to be a punchline to it, but there isn't. The plan went wrong. He is being broken down instead and being scattered. His cards have been laid down, Celtic style, in the order suggested by Mr. A.E. Waite, laid out and read, but they are the cards of a tanker and feeb: they point only to a long and scuffling future, to mediocrity...-to no clear happiness or redeeming cataclysm.”

“I've given up my living room, guest room, job, career, heterosexuality and my stance on no pets in the house, but I'm not giving up my room. I'm drawing a line.”

“He then begs to make his dear Twemlow known to his two friends, Mr. Boots and Mr. Brewer - and clearly has no distinct idea which is which.”