“The only real danger is flinching, seeming to notice your own nakedness. If you don’t flinch, you’re merely nude, which is a classically recognized form of beauty.”

“Agee wrote “like someone who had not just viewed the movie but been in it — out with it, as if it were a girl; drinking with it; driving in the night with it.”

“If you want to live and you want to prosper, you’ve got to be ambitious. You’ve got to be ready to sacrifice leisure and pleasure, and you’ve got to plan ahead. I was forty years old before I had any money at all. But these things don’t happen overnight. Now, how many people are there who will wait that long to be successful, and work all the time? Not very many. Maybe they’re right. Maybe I’m a bloody fool. But I don’t think I am.”

“Sometimes it seemed as if he'd always been very old. People said that time lasted for ever when you were young. That was lies. Lies and rosy spectacles. His spectacles were steel frames and time was those tattoos on Vasco's arm. They were more like time than anything else. Once, in the Empire of Junk, he'd seen an hour-glass. Now that came closest to the truth. Except you could turn it upside down and start again. So that was lies too. The sand should run out the first time, run right out. Once, and once only. Time wasn't outside you, it was inside. [...] Time was something that went bad, like fruit. To be used before it was all used up. Though, for most people, the only way to live was to deny that.”

“The first time she'd gotten a short haircut-- paid for with her own money, thank you very much-- her mother had demanded to know if she was a lesbian.”

“That's what birthdays were. Days when you found out where you stood. Who was on your side and who wasn't. Nothing to do with how old you were.”

“If blue helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run.”