BOOKS

"People say I talk slowly. I talk in a way sometimes called laconic. The phone rings, I answer, and people ask if they've woken me up. I lose my way in the middle of sentences, leaving people hanging for minutes. I have no control over it. I'll be talking, and will be interested in what I'm saying, but then someone -- I'm convinced this is what happens -- someone -- and I wish I know who, because I would have words for this person -- for a short time, borrows my head. Like a battery is borrowed from a calculator to power a remote control, someone, always , is borrowing my head."

- D. Eggers, You Shall Know our Velocity

"To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art."

- Mark Twain