“Get out of here while you can. She's crazier than a syphilitic suicide bomber with mad-cow disease.”

“Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded.”

“Besides, I can't get to where I want to go by conscious or unconscious suicide. I've got my strange little life to lead. Leading it the best I can - that's how I buy the ticket to where I want to be.”

“When a knot gets to tight, you can always cut the rope”

“Although she had resisted this knowledge all her life, had lived determinedly in the future focused there by ambition, she understood at last that this was the real condition of humanity: The dance of life occurred not yesterday or tomorrow, but only here at the still point that was the present. This truth is simmple, sel-evident, but difficult to accept, for we sentimentalize the past and wallow in it, while we endure the moment and in every waking hour dream of the future.”

“After once having made the mistake of watching television news, I had worried for a while about an asteroid hitting the earth and wiping out human civilization. The anchorwoman had said it was not merely possible but probable. At the end of the report, she smiled.”

“Give the narrative a lighter tone than you think it deserves, dear boy, lighter than you can bear to give it because you won't find the truth of life in morbidity, only in hope”