The Third Policeman, Flann O'Brien, page 72, paragraph 4

He gave me a nod in exchange for my remark and got two straight-handled teaspoons and put the handles into his last chest. What came out may well be guessed at. He opened this one and took another one out with the assistance of two knives. He worked knives, small knives and smaller knives till he had twelve little chests on the table, the last of them an article half the size of a matchbox. It was so tiny that you would not quite see the brasswork at all only for the glitter of it in the light. I did not see whether it had the same identical carvings upon it because I was content to take a swift look at it and then turn away. But I knew in my soul that it was exactly the same as the others. I said no word at all because my mind was brimming with wonder at the skill of the policeman.

Plume Books, 1967, New York, 0-452-25912-6

Crackpot, The Obsessions, John Waters, page 24 paragraph 2

I'm not even going to make the bed. The one rotten, suffocating set of polyester sheets (2) I still own is thrown in the garbage. I happily destroy the ozone by spraying on my favorite aerosol deodorant and sneer and the dumbbells who use the nauseating roll-on brands (3), the kind that retain stray underarm hairs from past use to remind you just how imperfect the human body really is. I get the newspaper from outside the door, hoping I'll catch the creep who sometimes steals it (4) when I oversleep, but throw it down in disgust when I see color photos (5) that never reproduce properly and look like 3-D comics without the benefit of glasses. Then the goddamn light bulb (6) burns out. Does General Electric think I'm made of money? I gotta get out of here. I think I'll just drive around town yelling insults at pedestrians.

Vintage, 1987, New York, 0-394-75534-0

Labyrinths, Selected Stories & Other Writings By Jorge Luis Borges, page 52, paragraph 2

There are five shelves for each of the hexagon's walls; each shelf contains thirty-five books of uniform format; each book is of four hundred and ten pages; each page, of forty lines, each line, of some eighty letters which are black in color. There are also letters on the spine of each book; these letters do not indicate or prefigure what the pages will say. I know that this incoherence at one time seemed mysterious. Before summarizing the solution (whose discovery, in spite of its tragic projections, is perhaps the capital fact in history) I wish to recall a few axioms.

New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1964, New York, 0-8112-0012-4