"How I Became Stupid" [.]

For best results, this book should be read half-seriously, on a moving train.

At second glance, the book is not quite as funny as one first thought. (A secondary character believes that the centrifugal force of the ferris wheel facilitates insemination.) Many lines play better out of context and depend much on proper receipt. Finally, what begins as a jaunty conceit ends like a French talkie --  "Clare's Knee" is the one I particularly have in mind.

• Not everyone can become an alcoholic, that's for sure, there's a process of selection; it's a sad fact, but that's life.
• My personality is a luxury that's costing me too dearly.
• What's it going to look like if I die of natural causes at age ninety?
• a salesman who susurrated his every word as if it were on ice skates
• his ambition to become ambitious
• Intelligence was a fallback option
• When we try to understand something, more often than not we kill it.
  
• (On the longevity of the stupid:) Tortoises live for centuries, water's immortal, and Milton Friedman's still alive.
  
• I wouldn't want to keep the stupidity itself, but the many beneficial particles floating around in it like trace elements: happiness, a bit of detachment, the ability to avoid suffering by empathizing...
• Jean Renoir: "What creates unhappiness in this world" is the fact that "everyone has their reasons."
  
• You yourself were always the easiest person to corrupt.
• Wake up, people don't fantasize about personality.
• There are no innocents in love, just victims.
• Madame de Stael: "In the realm of emotions, there is no need to lie in order to tell lies." [more]
  

alexandrines:  A line of French verse consisting of 12 syllables. From Alexandre, title of a romance about Alexander the Great that was written in this meter.
allopathy: A method of treating disease with remedies that produce effects antagonistic to those caused by the disease itself.