“Loeser's favourite book in Blimk's shop, where he spent most of his afternoons, was still Dames! And how to Lay them. He referred to it constantly, like a psalter, with an inexhaustible excitement ...”

“So intense was his sexual frustration that it had begun to feel like a life-threatening illness: testicular gout, libidinal gangrene.”

“What does it do?" said Loeser. "You feel as if you're being sucked down this fathomless, gloomy tunnel. Or to put it another way, it's as if all the different weights and cares of the world have be...”

“If I want to feel as if I'm being sucked down a fathomless gloomy tunnel for hours and hours then I have a complete set of Schopenhauer at home.”

“After that hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used ...”

“He realized that when he had been afraid to change he had been holding on to the illusion of Old Cheese that was no longer there”

“Where to start?Everything cracks and shakes,The air trembles with similes,No one world's better than another;the earth moans with metaphors.”