You know who seem not to know a damn thing about reading, is poets, that's who.

Even and odd.

Suppose Descartes needs to be alone. To be able to say what?

'What is decisive is not to get out of the circle, but to get in it in the right way.' —I seem to spend all my days trying.

'Once they had almost been happy. But their trade humiliated them now that they held themselves in higher esteem, and they goaded each other on in disgust, flattered each other, spoiled each other. Pécuchet adopted Bouvard's abruptness. Bouvard took on some of Pécuchet's moroseness.

"I'd rather be a juggler in the town square!" said one.

"You might as well be a ragman!" cried the other.

What an abominable situation! And not even the hope of escaping!'

'The only cure—don't talk about it.'

Quine writes as if warning you not to take his words too seriously.

There's a logic by which the writers occasionally have to show Adam Schiff outside the office.

'Words' is too innocent a metonym. In the habit of referring to words, to all words, to anything articulable in speech, to the whole of writing, you can nearly think you've exhausted what there is to talk about, proved somehow the inadequacy of words when you've barely used one.