"Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well alone? Why aren't the books enough?" Chapter 1, pg. 12

"Then I saw it. Crouched on top of a high cupboard was another parrot. Also bright green. Also, according to both the gardienne and the label on its perch, the very parrot which Flaubert had borrowed from the Museum of Rouen for the writing of Un coeur simple...How do you compare two parrots, one already idealized by memory and metaphor, the other a squawking intruder?" Chapter 1, pg. 21

"You can define a net in one of two ways, depending on your point of view. Normally, you would say that it is a meshed instrument designed to catch fish. But you could, with no great injury to logic, reverse the image and define a net as a jocular lexicographer once did: he called it a collection of...