“Love this description of minor character, Lou Zicutto: "Lou was branch claims manager of the mammoth insurance company where Decker worked part-time as an investigator. Lou was a spindly little twit, maybe a hundred twenty pounds, but he had a huge florid head, which he shaved every day. As a result he looked very much like a Tootsie Pop with lips.”

“He remembered his mentor, Lou Kline, telling him in the nineties that rock and roll had peaked at Monterey Pop. They'd been in Lou's house in LA with its waterfalls, the pretty girls Lou always had, his car collection out front, and Bennie had looked into his idol's famous face and thought, You're finished. Nostalgia was the end - everyone knew that.”

“He specializes in virgins! The brush of his fingertips turns virgins into slobbering mush." Mary Lou Molnar”

“I write down the three measurements which Lou and I agreed are central to knowing if the company is making money: net profit, ROI and cash flow.”

“It didn't matter how wonderful Andrew was and how much effort he was prepared to put into their relationship. While Lou didn't feel the same way, his love was only building a tower without foundations.”

“Gabe was referring to people like Lou who were competitive. Ambitious people, with their eye on the prize instead of the task at hand. People who wanted to be the best for all the wrong reasons and who'd take almost any path to get there. Being the best was only slightly better than being in the middle, which was equal to being the worst. All were merely a state of being. It was how a person felt in that state and why that was the important thing.Gabe wanted to explain to Lou that people like him were always looking at what the other person was doing, always looking to achieve more and greater things. Always wanting to be better. And the entire point of Gabe's telling Lou Suffern about people like Lou Suffern was to warn him that people who constantly looked over their shoulders often bumped into things.Paths are so much clearer when people stop looking at what everyone else is doing and instead concentrate on themselves.”