“Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.”

“I am haunted by the ghost of my father, I think that should allow me to quote Hamlet as much as I please.”

“Alexander the Great found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, "I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave.”

“If I could take a pill to suck out my insides, shrivel me up into dried-out bones for dogs to cart away, I would do it. Right there.”

“They took away what should have been my eyes (but I remembered Milton's Paradise). They took away what should have been my ears, (Beethoven came and wiped away my tears) They took away what should have been my tongue, (but I had talked with god when I was young) He would not let them take away my soul, possessing that I still possess the whole.”

“Digressions incontestably are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading.”