“Ennui had more distractions far more amusing than the automatons of a watchmaker in Mühlenberg.”

“The more the mouse pursues this line of of thought, the more it seems to him that the cat is a large, soft mouse.”

“All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.”

“Then solar systems, galaxies, supernovas, infinite space itself will become elements of a final masterwork--a never-ending festival, a celestial amusement park in which every exploding star and spinning electron is part of the empyreal choreography.”

“I had thought that words were instruments of precision. Now I know that they devour the world, leaving nothing in its place.”

“I thought of myself, in those days, as someone in disguise—beneath the obedient son, beneath the straight-A student, the agreeable well-brought-up boy with his friends and his ping-pong and his semiofficial girlfriend, there was another being, restless, elusive, mocking, disruptive, imperious, and this shadowy underself had nothing to do with that other one who laughed with his friends and went to school dances and spent summer afternoons at the beach.”

“Others saw in the trend still another instance of a disturbing tendency in the American suburb: the longing for withdrawal, for self-enclosure, for expensive isolation.”