Finally on Tuesday I understood why I was feeling depressed.

He had a face roughly the shape and color of a clumsily peeled Idaho potato, and he had a jaw like the end of a cigarette carton.

In fact one frequently seemed to gather all sorts of similar information about subjects one had less than profound interest in.

In addition to remembering things that one does not know how one remembers, one would also appear to remember things that one has no idea how one knew to begin with.

How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?

Helen ran off with a lover only once in her life herself, and for three thousand years nobody would ever let her forget about it.

What do any of us ever truly know?

One never does solve what it is about watching fires, really.

Trying to imagine E. M. Forster, who found Ulysses indecorous, at a London performance of Lenny Bruce – to which in fact he was once taken. Trying to imagine the same for a time-transported Nathaniel Hawthorne – who during his first visit to Europe was even shocked by the profusion of naked statues.

Can Protagonist think of a single film that interests him as much as the three-hundredth best book he ever read?