“Memory is a stopgap for humans, for whom time flies and what is passed is passed.”

“Dreams of flying have haunted the collective imagination since time immemorial.”

“Thus we have on stage two men, each of whom knows nothing of what he believes the other knows, and to deceive each other reciprocally both speak in allusions, each of the two hoping (in vain) that the other holds the key to his puzzle.”

“We were interrupted by a girl with a strawberry birthmark on her nose; she had some papers in her hand and asked if we had signed the petition for the imprisoned Argentinean comrades. Belbo signed without reading it. "They're even worse of than I am," he said to Diotallevi, who was regarding him with a bemused expression. "He can't sign," Belbo said to the girl. "He belongs to a small Indian sect that forbids its members to write their own names. Many of them are in jail because of government persecution." The girl looked sympathetically at Diotallevi and passed the petition to me."And who are they?" I asked."What do you mean, who are they? Argentinean comrades.""But what group do they belong to?""The Tacuarus, I think.""The Tacuarus are fascists," I said. As if I knew one group from the other."Fascist pig," the girl hissed at me. She left.”

“This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain.”

“I was dozing, and the clock woke me. I didn’t hear the first few chimes distinctly, that is to say, I didn’t count them. But as soon as I decided to count I realized that there had already been three, so I was able to count four, five, and so on. I understood that I could say four and then wait for the fifth, because one, two, and three had passed, and I somehow knew that. If the fourth chime had been the first I was conscious of, I would have thought it was six o’clock. I think our lives are like that—you can only anticipate the future if you can call the past to mind. I can’t count the chimes of my life because I don’t know how many came before. On the other hand, I dozed off because the chair had been rocking for a while. And I dozed off in a certain moment because that moment had been preceded by other moments, and because I was relaxing while awaiting the subsequent moment. But if the first moments hadn’t put me in the right frame of mind, if I had begun rocking in any old moment, I wouldn’t have expected what had to come. I would have remained awake. You need memory even to fall asleep. Or no?”

“Once upon a time there were mass media, and they were wicked, of course, and there was a guilty party. Then there were the virtuous voices that accused the criminals. And Art (ah, what luck!) offered alternatives, for those who were not prisoners to the mass media.Well, it's all over. We have to start again from the beginning, asking one another what's going on.”