The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

“He didn’t tell them what he now privately believed: that Josef was one of those unfortunate boys who become escape artists not to prove the superior machinery of their bodies against outlandish contrivances and the laws of physics, but for dangerously metaphorical reasons. Such men feel imprisoned by invisible chains—walled in, sewn up in layers of batting. For them, the final feat of autoliberation was all too foreseeable.” 

Kornblum speaks prophetically and foreshadows Joe's future, illustrating Joe's deeper nature and his need for escape, which will take many forms. This quote shows there is much more to Joe than what we learn at first, and it brings to mind the question: What will be Joe Kavalier's final act of autoliberation?

“‘People notice only what you tell them to notice,’ he said. ‘And then only if you remind them.’” 

Bernard Kornblum is offering a piece of advice to the young Josef Kavalier: the essence of misdirection for a magician. The technique of misdirection is used throughout the novel.

“Every golem in the history of the world, from Rabbi Hanina’s delectable goat to the river-clay Frankenstein of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, was summoned into existence through language, through murmuring, recital, and kabbalistic chitchat—was, literally, talked into life.” 

This quote is an homage from the narrator to the power of the spoken and written word, which has obvious connotations to the novel but also to comic books and the superheroes/golems contained therein.