"And I would sit and listen to him and try my best to show some interest in what he was saying, and gradually my eyes would glaze over and my blood would turn to water and a kind of paralysis would set in. I was young then, and much more courteous to older people - and to everyone else, for that matter, as I look back on it - than I should have been. Also, I had not yet found out about time; I was still under the illusion that I had plenty of time - time for this, time for that, time for everything, time to waste."

- Joseph Mitchell, Joe Gould's Secret, 1964.