“He read the classics, the French and the German among others, but primarily the Russian, which enchanted him with their heavy patience.”

“French is the most beautiful,” he said, “and Italian is the most poetic, and Russian the most powerful, German the most solid. But more business is done in English than in any other.”

“In his entirely personal experience of them, English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was from the streets. Which is to stay, stab his heart and it would bleed French, slice his brain open and its convolutions would be lined with English and German, and touch his hands and they would feel Spanish.”

“Dom Paulo had not expected to convince him. But it was with a heavy heart that the abbot noticed the plodding patience with which the thon heard him through; it was the patience of a man listening to an argument which he had long ago refuted to his own satisfaction.”

“It was Russia, January 5, 1943, and just another icy day. Out among the city and snow, there were dead Russians and Germans everywhere. Those who remained were firing into the blank pages in front of them. Three languages interwove. The Russian, the bullets, the German.”

“He found forty, of which he only really liked two: "rose rot" and "to err so." See inbred girl; lie breeds grin; leering debris; greed be nil, sir; be idle re. rings; ringside rebel; residing rebel; etc. That's true. Much of the meter in Don Juan only works if you read Juan as syllabic." Spanish. Italian. German. French and English. Russian. Greek. Latin. Arabic.”