there was language everywhere; you could read the city, the city was a grammar - Jonathan Lethem

The thing about this bookshelf is that each of these books is a vast experience unto itself, while also being both self-contained and superbly useless. Reading any one of them doesn't get you anywhere particularly meaningful; you haven't arrived or graduated; you've just gone and done something that passed the time. It's like taking a long walk with a friend who's got a lot to say. There's not cumulative purpose to it - it's just an excellent way to waste your life.

"Laughing at "Rapper's Delight"'s no revenge, and anyway it wasn't your idea, and anyway it's funny. Dean Street's another story, a realm of knowledge unapplicable here.
You've just about finished leaving Dean Street, and Aeroman, behind.
If this means avoiding the one who protected your ass all through junior high, the one you once ached to emulate, the one whose orbit you were happy just to swing in - if it means leaving the million-dollar kid's regular phone messages in Abraham's precise handwriting unreturned - that's a small price to pay for growing up, isn't it?
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around.
It's the end, the end of the seventies."

Everyone's body betrayed them in different ways, it was all forgiven and never discussed.