How do people go to sleep? I’m afraid I’ve lost the knack. I might try busting myself smartly over the temple with the night-light. I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things. – Dorothy Parker, Here Lies, 1939

[T]here are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion. – Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift, 1963, translated from Russian by Michael Scammell

To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new ones. – Nicolas Charles Joseph Trublet