“Chalmers, thanks to Baudelaire, knew all about Taffreuse Juive, opium, absinthe, negresses, Lesbos and the metamorphoses of the vampire ... Needless to say, Chalmers and myself were both virgins, in every possible meaning of the word.”

“Listen: Common sense doesn't mean what it used to mean."-Matthias Chalmers, STAIRWAY2 HEAVEN”

“Jack Nightingale: "So I'm a hero?"Supt. Chalmers: "No, Nightingale, you're an arsehole. But I can't arrest you for that.”

“Chalmers, like many of the English writers whom he then most admired, felt a strong natural sympathy with everything French. At Rouen he imagined himself as having escaped into a world in which it was possible to speak openly and unaffectedly of all those subjects which in England must be introduced by an apology or guarded with a sneer - poetry, metaphysics, romantic love.”

“Thank you. For Max Vandenburg, those were the two most pitiful words he could possibly say, rivaled only by I'm sorry. There was a constant urge to speak both expressions, spurred on by the affliction of guilt.”

“Though she knew even less about radios than about Southern Californians, there were to both outward patterns a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meaning, of an intent to communicate.”