QUOTE : ...the manner of speech of everybody in the world — held strange, elusive complexities, intricately presented with overtones of vagueness: I have always been baffled by these precautions so strict as to be useless, and by the intensely irritating little maneuvers surrounding them. In the end I have felt past caring; I have laughed them away with my clowning, or surrendered to them abjectly with a silent nod of the head, in the attitude of defeat.