You can learn more by going to the opera than you ever can by reading Emerson. Like that there are two sexes.

Once, I had a dream of fame. Generally, even then, I was lonely.

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

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.

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?

What do any of us ever truly know?