JR - pg. 32

- Rhine .. G O L D! they howled into the glare of footlights, cowering round the empty table at the center of the stage.
-- Rhinemaidens! ... The baton rapped sharply through their declining wail -- This is your shout of triumph. A joyful cry! Bast thumped out the theme again on the piano, missed a note, winced, repeated it. -- Can't you sound joyful, Rhinemaidens? Look, look around you. The river is glittering with golden light. You're swimming around the rock where the Rhinegold is. The Rhinegld! You love the Rhinegold Rhinemaidens, you ...

2666 - pg. 683

Hoensch said that culture was a chain of links composed of heroic art and superstitious interpretations. The young scholar Popescu said culture was a symbol in the shape of a life buoy. The Baroness Von Zumpe said culture was essentially pleasure, anything that provided or bestowed pleasure, and the rest was just charlatanry.The SS officer said culture was the call of the blood, a call better heard by night than by day, and also, he said, a decoder of fate. General Von Berenberg said culture was Bach and that was enough for him. One of his general staff officers said  culture was Wagner and that was enoguh for him  too. The other general staff officer said culture was Goethe, and as the general had said, that was enough for him, sometimes more than enough. The life of a man is comparable only to the life of another man. The life of a man, he said, is only long enough to fully enjoy the works of another man.