“Our White - Whites were a mixed crowd,including a well - known doctor,owner of a chateau near Versailles,an opera singer with an enormous belly and a chaplainbass;a homosexual architect with a beard,two night club porters,and a lawyer who sold Jewish refugees visas for a Central American Republic,which on arrival turned out to be non valid.”

“Escapism sold books, to be sure, but not nearly as many as were sold by exposing America’s flaws and making the average American reader (and book club member) look closely at his or her most cherished social assumptions. Americans might not be eager to accept integration, feminism, homosexuality, juvenile delinquency, and the drug culture– or to shoulder the blame for the existence of these problems– but they were certainly willing to read about them.”

“I want a beard as white as snow, and two feet deep.”

“Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.”

“So there we were on that ice floe, just the two of us, adrift in the polar night. Viskovitz turned and said, "I'd like you to get our conversation down in black and white." "It's not possible," I answered. "I'm not a typist. I'm not a writer. I'm a penguin. As far as I'm concerned 'getting it down in black and white' means making more penguins." So instead, there I was a month later, standing still with an egg under my belly, remembering... I was the one who had brought up the subject.”

“then, as though it had been waiting on a near by roof for their arrival, the moon came slanting suddenly through the vines and turned the girl's face the color of white roses.”