33 Quotes by Helen DeWitt

The reason is that even in a fantasy there is nothing even remotely erotic about a toilet bowl. In fact, considered as an accoutrement to a sexual encounter, a toilet bowl is a real cold shower.

Why is it, do you suppose," said Edward, "that the Continental breakfast has only to cross the Channel to be so damp and depressing. It seems simple enough; why does it travel so badly? In England one wonders whether it is really meant to be eaten. Here it is invariably ambrosial.""It is the tyranny of the toast rack," said Maria.

Here was a man who'd learned to write before he could think, a man who threw out logical fallacies like tacks behind a getaway car, and he always always always got away.

When a human being develops an argument, when a human being attempts not only to think but to speak with precision, he or she is often made to feel that this is a mark of social inadequacy and that there is something comical about it. The younger the human being, the more humorous it becomes. So that humans whose inclination it is to think and speak in this way become self-conscious from an early age, and a kind of minstrelisation creeps in.

Brian starts telling stories about Derrida: perfectly happy, it seems, to accept all the privileges of the author. Theories of authorial absence, says Brian, tend to leave out the curious circumstance that the author is always there to pick up his cheque.

You have to deal with people the way they are, not the way you'd like them to be.

Fashion is out of fashion," says X, in the tone of voice that makes you think, "quipped.

There were all these conservative colors that you don't see any more, this navy blue, navy blue is the hardest color to match so it dates really obviously because the idea people have in their head of a dark neutral blue changes over the years, people in the fashion industry, the way they perceive a dark blue is affected by the other colors they are working with at the time.

Reflected, framed, the room had charms foreign to the original, just as an ordinary or even ugly object gains beauty and dignity when painted or photographed.