"He might once have had the makings of a clever character, but he had chosen to be dreamy instead, and the sharpies cleaned him out."
"He dreaded the depths of feeling he would eventually have to face, when he could no longer call upon his eccentricities for relief."
"Dear Doktor Professor Heidegger, I should like to know what you mean by the expression "the fall into the quotidian." When did this fall occur? Where were we standing when it happened?"
Saul Bellow, Herzog, pages 3, 10, 49.
