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

Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover...or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?

Doubtless these are inconsequential perplexities. Still, inconsequential perplexities have now and again been known to become the fundamental mood of existence, one suspects.

Is T.S. Eliot the only poet one can think of who could have spent a year on his own in Paris at twenty-three—and managed to have no sexual encounter whatsoever?

You will say that I am old and mad, was what Michaelangelo wrote, but I answer that there is no better way of being sane and free from anxiety than by being mad.

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

The morning’s recollection of the emptiness of the day before. Its anticipation of the emptiness of the day to come.