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and those word lengths are correct...

Thanks Buddy. I have tried several versions of what you (and others) have suggested, but I can not make them work. Whichever way I have tried, I eliminate letter(s) necessary for the quotation. Back to the drawing board!

0pt0, Buddy at #60 is spot on. The jumbled quote is symmetrically disposed, so the 9 erased letters must be also.

If you highlight all the 20-odd letters in the grid which are not included in the quote, the relevant group of 9 will become easier to spot. This got me halfway, then I just carefully worked outwards until all the 33 letters were highlighted. Thankfully the end result is beautiful and unambiguous.

0pt0, the enumeration that you provided is correct, but there is a common mistake that I and others found ourselves using that also matches that enumeration. I suggest being very careful of your second 3 letter word.

crowdedmorning - Unless I am missing something that foinaven has found, you are correct. The symmetry is about a line as with any mirror symmetry.

I'm intrigued by the 'beautiful and unambiguous' shading because, like others, I haven't any idea what it represents!

It looks like some sort of mask or face - I can see the two eyes - but I can't find any connection to the quotation, its author or the puzzle title.

Please can someone put this clearly rather dim solver out of his misery, as cryptically as necessary to preserve decorum...

orientfan - I haven't seen any particular relevance myself. Aside from the point that the shading is an example of the second word in the quote. If there is more to the image I'm afraid it went over my head as well.

Check out the references at the bottom of the relevant wiki page. Click on 6 'The history of...', and click again to enlarge the small inset on the left-hand side.
Is this the character being (rather crudely) represented?

Drxx -

Not sure what wiki page you are on, but I think it represents the antagonist in a modern (and tortuously long) series of films.

Either way I think we're reading much more into this than we should, albarone. I certainly didn't expect the degree of confusion the highlighting has created - far from it - but at least it highlights the 'message' here. Just look at the many '...' squandered on the 'one ...' in this thread alone.