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

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?

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

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.

Once, Turner had himself lashed to the mast of a ship for several hours, during a furious storm, so that he could later paint the storm. Obviously, it was not the storm itself that Turner intended to paint. What he intended to paint was a representation of the storm. One's language is frequently imprecise in that manner, I have discovered.

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

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