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"Yes, there is," he said, pointing at his chest. “It's in here. It's the most discreet sort of number, so it never comes out where it can be seen. But it's here." We fell silent for a moment, trying to picture the square root of minus one in some distant, unknown place.

A World Without Selfie Sticks

“It seemed that Not-Debbie was also named Deborah, but she hadn't come to New York that morning from Australia. She'd come from a parallel world. I'm not kidding that's what she said between sips of her weak cappuccino. She wasn't part of an alien invasion or the result of a scientific military experiment gone wrong. She was here as a contestant on a TV game show….”

And perhaps he wouldn't even have been admitted to the United States…the authorities would have sent him home….ignoring…he no longer had a home country. For one could not hope for pity here in this country,and the things that Karl had read about America in that regard were quite true; here it was only those who were fortunate who truly seemed to enjoy their good fortune amid the indifferent faces on all sides.

-At Love Canal,the Hooker Chemical Corporation was found guilty of monstrous violations of the law,I heard him say…
-For years…those people were found guilty of the most flagrant abuses of public health,I heard him say…
-Of dumping chemicals…no regard for public health…I heard him say…
-In immense quantities…thousands of leaking barrels,I heard him say…
-For that was their business,I heard him say…

…we told the story that someone had announced to the cabinet that he had died and that they had asked each other in fright who's going to tell him, ha, ha, ha, when the truth was that it wouldn't have mattered to him if he knew it or not…because at that time no one except him knew that all he had left in the pockets of his memory were a few odd scraps of the vestiges of the past,that he was alone in the world…

…he was left with the undeserved burden of truth without a loving mother…more lonely…in this nation which I didn't choose willingly but which was given me as an established fact…which is as it has always been since time immemorial with this feeling of unreality…with this unhistoried people who don't believe in anything except life…no one to lose a game of dominoes to…no one to believe his truth…

We may be on terms of the most intimate friendship with people…and then one day we think we've been let down by these people whom we've always respected…and consequently we hate and despise them and want nothing more to do with them…not wanting to spend the rest of our lives pursuing them with our hatred as we previously pursued them with our love and affection, we quite simply erase them from our memories.

...so far removed from the world that he himself did not realize that his fierce struggle to exist twice was feeding the contrary suspicion that he was existing less and less, that he was lying in a lethargy....

…K. said: "Well,I've seen what things look like here,and I'm ready to leave."
“You haven't seen everything yet," said the court usher…
“I don't want to see everything," said K… “I want to leave,where's the exit?"
"Surely you're not lost already," asked the court usher…
“Come with me," said K. "Show me the way…so many ways here."
"It's the only way," said the court usher, reproachfully….

He was too liberal in this regard, he risked spreading his charm thin. Once you perceived the patches where it had worn through, it was hard to see the charm—hard to see the man himself, if you were in any way wary…But most people did not stay in his orbit long enough for this to happen….

…I reached up and scratched his face.I drew a little of his blood, which caused Dimitri to turn pale and push me away. Then -oh, I cannot bear to recall Dimitri's terrible words!— he called me a common whore, and…left the room. I ran after him, I said how I was sorry…but it was too late. I heard the front door close. Oh, what have I done? Damn Dimitri's cold heart and his hot blood. I love him.

...Schattenfroh never written, but always only mediated…its white script is sacrosanct, the black script...overwrites it... Schattenfroh is to be deprinted with white ink...page by page, line by line, letter by letter.

l am going to ask my question as vaguely as possible. What do make of the conversations around apport vs asport? Early on in the novel a gun and a woman goes missing. In chapter 22, there is a claim that bullets are asported away and counterfeit goods are referred to as "counterfeit apports", perfect for stealing during a mysterious journey to the intended receipt.
Quantum physics voodoo?

How can one go through something and, simultaneously, have gone in the opposite direction, without going in a circle…we must have paced out a palindrome toward its middle….

"The federals…likely just a front…It's the outfit that's behind them, a nationwide syndicate of financial tycoons…organized…against the forces of evil…everything to the left of Herbert Hoover…worried this latest Roosevelt if he gets in might decide to step out on his own and even if he does revert…it might not be in time to stop the Red apocalypse that's got them spooked out of…their wits.”

…there were long periods of his childhood when he was waiting, in a dressing room, alone in the apartment, so that in some ways when I looked back on his childhood, he was at once there but also not there. Or perhaps it was that I was at once there but also not there, as if Xavier's childhood had taken place in my vicinity, with the details somehow escaping me.

When I once asked him why he so likes going on walks, he said: to disappear into the landscape.

"Pineapples come and pineapples go…I'm telling you this is the one'll put us all swimming in the gravy...this isn't just daydreaming through the Depression for a change, I guarantee you there's money in this, big money, I've seen it!"
…Hicks tries to keep the doubts out of his face…
"Too bad about my mattress, already over legal capacity, corners of bills hanging out, sure you understand-"

What sort of men were they? What were they talking about? What office did they represent?
After all, K. lived in a state governed by law, there was universal peace, all statutes were in force; who dared assault him in his own lodgings? He'd always tended to take things lightly, to believe the worst only when it arrived, making no provision for the future….

I speak Satan's name, a cross appears before me floating freely in space, the cross grows larger with each utterance of Satan's name. I can't help but utter Satan's name, it's a compulsion, thus do l utter Satan's name and the cross gets bigger…the cross is getting closer and closer to me…and I enter into the cross. I hang from the cross...and I feel a kind of Schadenfreude, no....

"You have a boo-boo, Klara."
"You can't kiss it, so go away."
"I don't want to kiss it. I want to lick it," Jack said.
"Does someone live, I'm very curious about the thing across the street there."
"Inside the little Greek temple? I think
it's an office."
"I would love to get a job there."
"Import-export."
"I could do either."

"We don't indulge ourselves in cheap and easy delusions, Sims."
"Cheap and easy."
"Am I right? You and I. We don't believe that what is behind an event is so organized and sinister that we have to make a science out of it."

My mom…one day she left her body and I have never seen her again.
When I say that…What I mean is: the shitty little cells that cluster together to muster up in sum total the person I used to know are now clustering in some inferior way and the person I know cannot ever be found.

Judith was quiet, contemplating the ten plagues. Is she an Egyptian or an Israelite? Is she the carrier or receiver of plagues?

I opened the box….Perhaps my reactions were in some ways secondhand or performed-the gasp of delight, for example-but the feeling they were designed to express was sincere….

…they ask me whether I've heard about Joana's death…and then I go and accept their invitation. I momentarily gave way to the most shameful sentimentality, I thought, and the Auersbergers immediately took advantage of it; they took advantage of the suicide of our mutual friend Joana, I thought, to issue their invitation, which I at once accepted, though it would have been wiser to turn it down.

Depending on the copy in question, Schattenfroh can smell and taste like various different things. Earthy Ike wild boar, spicy-sweet like Teltow turnips, putric Ike overripe Jacktruit. Not a single page of the copies is printed. They are the raw material for hours of solemn palate ceremonies.
So, what is it I am to eat? I eat Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. Both take a long time to chew through.

“I take my students into garbage dumps and make them understand the civilization they live in. Consume or die. That's the mandate of the culture. And it all ends up in the dump….”

1954
Dearest M.: Here I am in Boston, on Marlborough Street, number 239. I am looking out on a snowstorm. It fell like a great armistice, bringing all simple struggles to an end.

Ms. Kennison yelled at us for talking, so we shut up. A seed sown. There was still the question of if they let girls in the Arson Club. I could imagine some bullshit misogynist nonsense governing this also. My aunt was always telling me-never accept any privileges that are for girls, because it is only half the coin.