Een mens weet dat het een goed boek wordt als dit de eerste zin is:

I WISH either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon what they were then doing; — that not only the production of a rational Being was concern’d in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind ; — and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his
whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost : —— Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, —— I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Ik kan niets beloven, maar ik ga mijn best doen om erdoor te geraken.

Als ik door Finnegan’s Wake geraakt ben (nauwelijks, en na jaren proberen, en ik geef toe met overslagen van menige bladzijde, en wellicht niet een twintigste begrijpend van wat er in stond), dan moet dit ook lukken.

Euh, waarom, hoor ik een menigte internauten vragen? Wel, daarom. Een mens moet ambities hebben in ’t leven.