Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word.

There is no triumph of good, and if there were it would not be a triumph of good.

Eating reveals the characteristic grossness of the human race and also the in-built failure of its satisfactions. We arrive eager, we stuff ourselves and we go away depressed and disappointed and probably feeling a bit queasy into the bargain. It's an image of the déçu in human existence. A greedy start and a stupefied finish. Waiters, who are constantly observing this cycle, must be the most disillusioned of men.

I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge.

Upon the demon-ridden pilgrimage of human life, what next I wonder.

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man.

I think the novel is essentially a comic form (tragedy is for the theatre), not meaning by that full of jokes, but that it is about the absurd detail of human life, the way in which one cannot fully understand what is happening. Life is muddle and jumble and ends inconclusively, and when this is presented with great comic art the sorrows of human life can be truthfully conveyed; one is moved by the spectacle, and feels that something truthful has been told in a magic way.