"I'm in the unique position of being able to call my brother, straight out, a non-stop talker - which is a pretty vile thing to call somebody, I think - and yet at the same time to sit back, rather, I'm afraid, like a type with both sleeves full of aces, and effortlessly remember a whole legion of mitigating factors (and 'mitigating' is hardly the word for it). I can condense them all into one: By the time Seymour was in mid-adolescence - sixteen, seventeen - he not only had learned to control his native vernacular, his many, many less than elite New York speech mannerisms, but had by then already cone into his own true, bull's-eye, poet's vocabulary. His non-stop talks, his monologues, his nearharangues then came as close to pleasing from start to finish - for a good many of as, anyway -as, say, the bulk of Beethoven's output after lie ceased being encumbered with a sense of hearing, and maybe I'm thinking especially, though it seems a trifle picky, of the B-flat-major and C-sharp-minor quartets. Still, we were a family of seven children, originally. And, as it happened, none of us was in the least tongue-tied. It's an exceedingly weighty matter when six naturally profuse verbalizers and expounders have an undefeatable champion talker in the house. True, he never sought the title. And he passionately yearned to see one or another of us outpoint or simply outlast him in a conversation or an argument. Az s'm stignal do zavidnoto polozhenie da moga napravo da nareka brat si krechetalo -- koeto ne e mnogo laskatelno -- i s'shchevremenno da sedia spokoino, siakash s'm p'len gospodar na polozhenieto, i bez usilie da si pripomniam tsiala reditsa smekchavashchi vinata obstoiatelstva (pri vse che ,,smekchavashchi vinata" edva li e nai-podkhodiashchiiat izraz v sluchaia). Moga da gi obobshchia v edno: po vremeto, kogato Siimor be dostignal sredata na iunosheskata si v'zrast -- na shestnaiset-sedemnaiset godini, -- toi ne samo vladeeshe do s'v'rshenstvo rodniia si ezik s vsichkite mu t'nkosti, no si beshe s'zdal i sobstven, mnogo tochen poeticheski rechnik. Negovata govorlivost, negovite monolozi, negovite edva li ne proklamatsii zvuchekha pochti tolkova priiatno -- pone za mnozina ot nas, -- kolkoto, da rechem, povecheto ot tvorbite na Betkhoven, s'zdadeni, sled kato se e osvobodil ot bremeto na slukha; makar i da zvuchi pretentsiozno, tuk imam predvid po-spetsialno kvartetite v si bemol mazhor i do diez min'or. V nasheto semeistvo biakhme sedem detsa. I nito edno ot tiakh ne beshe lisheno v ni nai-malka stepen ot dar slovo. E, ne e li goliamo teglo, kogato shestima slovookhotlivtsi i t'lkuvateli imat v k'shchata si edin nepobedim shampion po rechovitost? Viarno, toi nikoga ne se e stremil k'm tazi titla. Dori zhaduvashe niakoi ot nas da go nadmine ako ne po krasnorechie, to pone do d'lgorechie v niakoi spor ili prost razgovor."