My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.

But in my arms she was always Lolita.

I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.

Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is.

Religion has the same relation to man's heavenly condition that mathematics has to his earthly one: both the one and the other are merely the rules of the game. Belief in God and belief in numbers: local truth and truth of location.

Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.

In this crazy mirror of terror and art a pseudo-quotation made up of obscure Shakespeareanisms (Chapter Three) somehow produces, despite its lack of literal meaning, the blurred diminutive image of the acrobatic performance that so gloriously supplies the bravura ending for the next chapter.